From Edie: Learn worldbuilding for writers from the master—A.C. Williams—with 5 essential questions to create a believable story world. Build depth through history, culture, setting, and systems for stronger fiction.
Worldbuilding for Writers: 5 Essential Questions to Create a Believable Story World
by A.C. Williams @ACW_Author
Get your fandom flags out, people. Today we’re talking about some of the practical aspects of worldbuilding. We know why worldbuilding is important, whether you write speculative fiction or not, but there is more to worldbuilding than just coming up with imaginative settings.
It’s one thing to BUILD your world. It’s something else to USE it after you’ve built it.
So, to start, we’re going to look at five essential questions to ask yourself about your story world. These questions are vital to try to answer so that you have enough foundation to actually construct a functional world where your story can take place.
These questions are ones I use. You may have a different list, and that’s perfectly fine. You need to do what works best for you. But this is where I usually start when it comes to establishing a world that will serve my story.
Question 1: Do you know the history of your story world?
Who established the four houses of Hogwarts? How were the districts of Pan-em divided? When was Camp Half-Blood founded? Where did the Jedi develop their saber techniques? Who was Zefram Cochrane? (Where my Trekkies at?)
In most examples of speculative fiction, the story takes place at a specific point in the timeline of the story world itself. Even if the point of that particular book isn’t about the past, fantasy and science fiction books usually take pains to establish a sense of history that existed before the story began.
This is what gives fantasy its lived-in quality, where the world feels as though it’s a real place that people can experience for themselves. If you have read books where the world gives the indication that you could vacation there, that’s not an accident. That’s not something that “just happens” in the process of storytelling. That is an intentional effect an author generates by crafting an existing history that shapes the current narrative.
Question 2: What are the people groups and social circles in your story world?
What’s the difference between Abnegation and Dauntless? What about the Fremen and the Harkonnen? Why do the elves find the dwarfs unnerving (and vice versa)? If a Klingon, a Ferengi, and a Romulan walk into a bar, are you staying?
You can’t have a story without characters. Every effective story needs people that readers can connect with and resonate with. People complicate things, though, so it’s a good idea to understand the types of people you choose to employ in your story. Not that you need to go read a ton of psychology books, but it helps if you have experience with a variety of different types of people and people groups. Because, well, people are weird.
Cultures add all sorts of extra complications, and if you are using a culture that isn’t your own, you need to research it so you don’t unintentionally misinterpret it. Along with people and cultures, you need languages and idiom and non-verbal communication as well. Don’t skimp on these elements of character design.
And also don’t forget the fact that every culture tends to generate their own social circles. Like is drawn to like. We develop comfort levels based on similar traits. This is an important detail to incorporate when you design a civilization.
Question 3: What is the climate and geography like in your story world?
Do you have any lonely mountains? Or have you got a “Spine of the World” in your continent? Is there an Everstorm? Is there a fire-swamp full of unusually large rodents? What kind of crops grow in your story world? Krill? Kasa? Quadrotriticale?
Don’t underestimate the value of knowing the geography of your story world. Whether you’re writing fantasy where your characters have to hoof it on foot across the equivalent of New Zealand or you’ve placed the story on a space ship with multiple decks, you still need to know what the physical environment is like. The actual setting of your story can provide priceless opportunities for environmental obstacles, potential threats to your character’s safety, and the ever-present option to raise the stakes.
Question 4: What role do faith/religion play in your story world?
You may not call it faith, but your characters must all believe something. This isn’t negotiable. Every person alive has some kind of belief system, even if that belief system claims to be science instead. Science can’t explain everything, so some elements of science are still held hostage by faith (even if no one admits it).
Is there an all-powerful Deity in your world? Is there a pantheon of lesser gods? How do your characters respond to supernatural beings of extraordinary power? Do they revere them? Do they worship them? Even if you yourself are “not religious,” if you want to incorporate religion into your story world, you must be honest about its implications.
Faith is a powerful motivating force, but portraying a character who believes something because it is convenient won’t work. Faith without conviction and related actions reads as half-hearted laziness, and no one will actually buy that the character is devoted to anything.
Question 5: Magic or technology?
If you’re writing speculative fiction, this is a question you can’t escape. Science fiction must incorporate some kind of futuristic technology. Fantasy must incorporate some element of impossibility MADE POSSIBLE through the power of someone/something Other. These are genre distinctions.
Granted, there is a genre called non-magic fantasy, which is exactly what it sounds like. But even then, in those kinds of stories, something fantastical is still an important part of the story; we just don’t ever focus on where it came from.
Here’s the challenge with magic and tech: You can’t just throw it at the wall and hope it sticks. Both fictional technology and magic systems must be logical, consistent, and based in some element of reality otherwise they will translate on the page as the author taking a short cut.
This is just a very brief overview of how to think about speculative worldbuilding. There are many more questions to ask, and the answers often vary on a project-to-project basis. But the next time you sit down to work on a fantasy or science fiction project, ask yourself these questions about your world and see if you discover a deeper level of a world you thought you already knew.
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