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Have you ever created a world for a novel? How did you create it? What are your tips for other world-builders? What are your favorite worlds in fiction?
Oh wow, I missed this topic when it was created! Thanks so much for starting it, @levipierpont! Sorry to be so late, but it’s a little more difficult to find new topics with the forum rearranged as it has been. 😉
So, world-building. This is one of my absolute worst pet peeves, so bear with me as I rant. The first thing is cultures— an amazing amount of diversity is possible here, and it can add so much depth to the story. A few key positions I’ve noticed that define different cultures are
a: their religion, or lack thereof.
b: treatment of women.
c: type of industry— trade, craftsmanship, sustaining exports and imports. The imports and exports will depend largely on what kind of land the culture is— mountainous, swampy, flat-land, forested, islands, etc. This category is impossibly broad. 😛
d: history.
e: attitude towards the arts— some cultures value strength and common sense and sturdy level-headedness and have very little tolerance for ‘frivolous’ arts of any kind, but others value poetry and romanticism and stuff like that. I always kind of wished there was one that valued both… 😛 I may have to create it some day. 😉 This will also be influenced by their religion— if the religion is anything like Roman Catholicism during the Enlightenment arts will be very much frowned upon.
f: form of government— committee, king, council, democracy, republic, anarchy, etc. Very important.
g: societal structure.The second facet of world-building is the actual physical world. I have way more fun with this than I probably should— especially now that I’m taking a course in physical science and actually beginning to understand about these things. I go to ridiculous lengths, even so far as to designate wind and weather patterns, and currents in the oceans that effect the schedules of the different trading transports. And really, in my opinion, this makes your world all the more believable. Think about our world— extreme weather patterns in different regions, caused by the colliding of different wind currents and the spinning of the globe, and the tilt of the earth that causes the seasons… there’s so much there that we don’t really think about. But we should.
I could rant about this for hours. 😀
Oh yes, I’ve created three worlds to date…or is it four? And then there is a futuristic world I’m writing a story in…
Anyhow, I agree with what Kate said. Also, there is the religious aspect to your world. Is there more than one religion? Is there a good and bad religion? How does it effect life? Laws? Peoples and nations?
Also, what of powers/magic. By this, I mean is there anything inherent in the world which may or may not be what we’d call magical but which is something we couldn’t do? Such as a race of people who can read minds or communicate with animals.
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
Actually, I wrote an article for this site on world building. And it’s easier to just link it than repeat it… https://kingdompen.org/a-three-tiered-world/ There are a few other articles here on world building too; you can look them up in the search box.
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
Aw cum on @kate-flournoy, that was just getting good.
By the way, even though this has nothing to do with the subject, you said
if the religion is anything like Roman Catholicism during the Enlightenment arts will be very much frowned upon.
I thought the roman catholic church was always highly icon oriented. *whimper random cute animal face with a “come on, sort this out for me” sort of look in the second layer of expression*
Buy yeah, I want you to keep rambling. I’m probably gonna actually write a fantasy trilogy some day, (aaaahhhhhhh!!!!!) and so I’m interested in the intricacies of this sort of thing. I don’t know what happened. I was like, “I’ve got to write a story with this ending.” “Yeah, that would work best as a fantasy story” “Self! Don’t say that!” But it was true. And then that happened twice. Anyways, so my stories have a mind of their own.
troodle troodle traddle ay
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Here I am, finally @Daeus! I’ve been drooling over this topic all morning. Permission to rant!!!!!!! It doesn’t get any better than this!!!!!!!
Oh yeah, first things first. Did I say Enlightenment? *drops head wearily in hand, rubs face with rigid fingers* I did, didn’t I? No excuse for that— an apology will have to do. 😛 I meant during the Renaissance— and I was thinking specifically of Savanarola when I said that. I don’t know what on earth possessed me to mix up the Renaissance with the Enlightenment, but there you have it. It happened. 😛
Now! *rubs hands in delight* On to the meat of the post!
Let’s say we have a city, okay? Let’s call it Mordenrath. Why? Because I want to. Enough said.
Now.
We’re designing this city, right? First question— where is it? Let’s say it’s tucked under the edge of a long, high mountain range, and faced on the other side with a huge stretch of nothing but desert sand. Being so placed, and under such conditions, there are a few things we know about the city right away. It’s got to be built more or less all of stone, to stand against the blasting of desert winds and sand. It’s also going to have a lot of its windows facing the mountains and not the desert, so they can be opened without admitting too much sand. Now let’s say just for convenience’s sake that the desert is to the east and the mountains are to the west, and that in this fantasy world the sun rises in the east as it does in our world. That means that in the evening, the shadows of the city buildings and the walls and stuff are going to be falling over the desert. Hang onto that thought for a minute.
Being on the edge of a desert, Mordenrath’s sustenance lies in the sale of camels (or whatever fantasy equivalent you want— seven humped Boondoggles with three heads, if you like). There are also prominent men in Mordenrath who offer guided caravans and stuff like that to take traders and travelers across the desert, but the profits from these go directly into the private purses of those prominent men, and not into the city treasury. Let’s also say that these prominent men (let’s call them sultans, since Mordenrath is taking on a somewhat middle-eastern feel) have imposed a tariff on all goods brought through Mordenrath by any path— imports, exports, anything that passes the city anywhere. Let’s say it’s unfairly high— twenty five percent, perhaps.
Now what can we deduce from that? Well, one very important thing: if these sultans are able to take such high-handed advantage of all passing through and still not put it into the city treasuries for the good of the entire community… then the governing system in Mordenrath is either incredibly weak or incredibly disorganized. Perhaps they have a council of five hundred elders, who can accomplish nothing but sit around all day and argue. They need to cut government size, if you ask me! 😛 So the government, for whatever reason, is incompetent, giving the sultans free rein.
That gives us a lot of room for other stuff. Let’s say the lower class, quite reasonably enough, is angry at the sultans for their cheating the city of money that by rights belongs to the whole community. The lower class consists mostly of camel-boys, *ahem* excuse me, Boondoggle-boys, Boondoggle-breeders, Boondoggle-tenders, and keepers-of-Boondoggle-stables. Not exactly very classy people. So what they do, is they take advantage of the government’s incompetence to set up a black market for goods kept until now solely for the sultans’ enrichment. They meet with traders in the evening beneath the eastern wall of the city, where the shadows are long and deep. They don’t meet at night because the city gates close at nine. Now the sultans get wind of this black market beneath the walls of their city, but they don’t do anything about it because…
The second most influential class in the city is the priesthood of Mordenrath’s pantheistic religion. The priests have imposed a ‘tithe’ on the wealthy of the city (aka sultans) by which they ‘minister in the temple to the gods of nature’. They basically hold the sultans in their power, and care nothing for the lower class because nothing can be got out of them. But these priests are very zealous to teach their religion, and one of the precepts of that religion is that there are evil spirits in the sands that blow from the desert in the evening. Now the sands blow from the desert in the evening because of the heating and cooling weather patterns in that part of the world, bouncing off the mountains and swirling all around the city. The lower class doesn’t care a hoot about the religion, but the sultans, being under the thumb of the priesthood, are terrified of those sandy winds, and so on no account will they rout out the black market that meets in those very winds beneath the walls at evening. It’s too dangerous— it’s playing with the supernatural.*deep breath* Whew! I almost think we need an entire story and a whole set of characters just to root out the corruption in that one city!
Anyway. Was that any help @Daeus?
@kate-flournoy In all honesty, it was probably more fun than helpful, but you highlighted the huge importance of setting in constructing plot, which I normally think of as less important.
So basically, I just need 20hrs to daydream. Hmm. I think I can handle that.
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Well, let’s see if I can be a tad more constructive, though daydreaming can certainly do a lot. 😉
I would say the first thing to establish about a world is where it came from— and since we’re Christian writers, the answer to that question will probably always be ‘From the creator’. Our God figure. The next thing is to establish the people’s relationship to that creator— do they worship him, do they hate him; do they even believe he exists? Assuming the answer is that they know him and worship him, the next question is how? Are there temples? Is this a doctrine of Law, or a doctrine of Grace? (Or more correctly, assuming the people have already ‘fallen’, has Grace come yet?).
The religion can be a mainstay of the plot, or it can just be a personal belief for some of the characters. It doesn’t even have to be in there at all— but it helps to know how this stuff works before you go into the actual story.
The next step is to figure out the geological makeup of your world— and the physical laws. *snicker* This is where you can really start having fun. You can copy earth’s physical laws if you want— that’s perfectly okay, and I do that for the most part. But imagine a world with three suns, or seven moons, or zero-gravity zones over the equator. Or perpetual cyclones at the poles because the earth is spinning one way and the atmosphere another. *evil smile* Yeah… I like that cyclones idea.
After you’ve got that crazy stuff out of the way, you can start plotting out your continents. There are no rules for this one— you can literally do whatever you want.
Once you figure out where the continents are and all that, you can figure out the climates of different places by their nearness to the source of light, the amount of humidity that should be in the air (Like an island up near those perpetually spinning cyclones— lot of moisture in the air there.) Find the dry, arid zones that would be caused by the makeup of your planet, and the rain forest zones, and all that stuff. Mountainous places will be caused by the shifting and grinding of tectonic plates (assuming your world has tectonic plates hahaha), as will rifts in the earth. Not canyons, mind— canyons are caused by floods or rivers, and rivers, as a side note, flow into the sea, so good places for harbors or trading cities are along rivers.
For more specific regional conditions, find where the nearest water sources are, establish flood planes and marshes and weather patterns (like if they’re against a mountain range they can get some pretty odd phenomena) and find the trees. Trees are very important.
The orbit/general movement of your planet will affect wind patterns on a more global scale, so fiddle around with that as well.Once you have all THAT established (if you even get that far, and I guarantee you most people aren’t crazy enough to make it) you can start figuring out the cultures by where geographically the cities stand, and what their history is, etc. Establish different people groups, (different creature groups, if you have fantasy creatures as well) establish how they interact with each other, and establish where the best places for trade are. Islands can deal in pearls. Forested kingdoms can deal in timber. Rocky kingdoms can deal in stone.
Also, find the most valuable (as in fertile, productive, desirable, rich) bits of the world so you can know what to make your governments fight about when you need a quick war.Speaking of governments, their structure will depend heavily on the culture, and the people, and the surrounding environment.
And I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something important… I’ll post it if it comes to me again. 😛 Did that answer a few more of your questions, or am I still hitting wide of the mark? @Daeus
@kate-flournoy I suppose I never understood how much geography and weather affects everything. I am absolutely going to have to create some territory with rare but extreme natural disasters. Unfortunately, all that stuff about wind patterns and weather pretty much left my brain as soon as I was done learning it, but maybe I could just create my own weather patterns and then if they don’t make sense just say that in my world the weather factors are so ridiculously complicated that of course my nonsense makes sense.
I’m going to go have some fun daydreaming now.
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Yeah, I’m studying weather right now in my science @Daeus, so it’s been on the brain a lot lately. 😛 It’s perfectly fine if you’re world doesn’t even have weather patterns at all— it’s just our weather affects our world so much (Cape Horn, for instance, and that’s just one example) it seems like it would be realistic to have important weather in a fantasy world.
Keep in mind, too, that only a very minor fraction of the world-building you do as a writer will be laid out in so many words in the actual story. This is mostly for you— to help you get a feel for the world, and for the culture, and write accordingly. You don’t tell the reader ‘okay, these people acted like this because this is their culture so don’t think they’re weird, that’s just what they do’— not at all! You take what information you personally have about the culture and translate it into the characters, then let the readers draw their own conclusions. Make sense?And daydreaming is always fun, regardless! 😉
Cape Horn? What’s that?
Tectonic platters? Hopefully stake’s involved.
Rain?
Cyclones?
Science?
I did start a map today. Working on rudimentary things. Will add cities and further details eventually.
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Tectonic plates, @Daeus, to be precise. 😛 😉 And no, sorry— no steak. 😉
Oh well, I’ll just have chocolate covered ozone instead.
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*stares at screen, slowly turns color of guacamole* Chocolate… covered… ozone? Please… tell me you did not just say that.
And good luck with the maps @Daeus— and the fantasy itself, of course! 🙂 It takes a bit to get used to writing fantasy after having done mostly historical fiction, (it happened to me) but once you get the feel for it it doesn’t leave you.
… except I haven’t written mostly anything!
Wahahaha!!!!!!
I do have a year or two at least to psyche myself up thankfully. I’m already having loads of fun with all the creatures: Zargoth, Meredin, Ublidek, Teedletiden – I’m going to have to make some more.
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