Worldbuilding The Easy Way
One of the things that trips new writers up is worldbuilding. You might watch Game of Thrones and think, “I want to be a writer!” but the minute you sit down to pen a story, thinking back to the fantasy epic, you get cold feet.
After all, within stories like that, there are whole worlds; new planets, new races, magical and religious systems, weird languages… how could you possibly create anything like that and tell a story?
Well… fantasy tropes aside (more on that in a minute) I’m going to give you the tools to create deep and fleshed out worlds that your readers can step into. What’s better, it’s not going to involve a complex process.
I’ve done this exact thing this morning, and it took me a couple of hours at most.
If you want to learn how to do worldbuilding as a fiction writer, keep reading.
Example: Stereotypical Superhero
In this article, I’m going to use a stupid example.
I often do this in my articles, and I usually think them up as I write. This time I’ve prepared ahead.
I’m going to use the stereotypical superhero as an example. Our hero is a teenage guy who accidentally drinks a chemical that gives him some stereotypical superpower like super-strength or mind-reading or something.
I’ve picked this example because it’s fantastical enough to keep the fantasy/sci-fi writers amused and everyone else can just dispense with the superpowers. This system will work for any story in any setting.
(Time-out: This method is cobbled together via my study of pulp writers who create a ton of stories very quickly. If you want to spend years developing a theology for your story, then go ahead.)
Start With The Real World
Do you want a fully-fleshed out world complete with religious systems, different cultures, angels and demons, political systems and social conventions that seem to be thousands of years in the making?
Congratulations… you’re in one.
Unless there’s a very good reason not to, set your story in the real world. It’s pretty fascinating. Fantasy epics can exist in the medieval, sci-fi can be set in the halls of NASA and god-knows that crime and romance both exist on every corner of the planet.
Our stereotypical superhero can find a villain everywhere and start cleaning up whatever city you live in. There’s no need to create a different planet.
Here’s a secret tip: Even fantasy writers do this. They just give stuff a different name – and it’s normally pretty clumsy. The Dothraki in Game of Thrones are the Mongol Horde without realism and The Lord Of The Rings is based mostly around Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse sagas.
Don’t waste time trying to recreate worlds when there are already plenty of good ones to choose from right here.
If You Want Something Weird… Find Some Weirdos
Let’s just extend the above for a while… you might think, “But stereotypical superhero will be bored trying to save New York from baddies and it’ll be just the same as every other cookie-cutter Hollywood Blockbuster.”
I might agree. Here’s a little hack though; If you think the world isn’t a weird and terrifying place, go and find some people who do.
Right now, there are people on forums talking about how the Satanic messages in Lady Gaga videos are signs that the 4th Dimension energy vampires of the New World Order are about to implement a global catastrophe so they can enslave us all.
Now go read some of those stories and assume they are real, and stereotypical superhero exists in that world.
That’s plenty of worldbuilding for free.
Let’s Get To The Point: What Are Stories Made Of?
Stories are made of a few basic elements every time.
There’s a hero’s journey. There are antagonists, love interests and allies to show the hero the way.
Most importantly, stories are a set of conflicts that our hero has to resolve.
There’ll be internal conflicts – should stereotypical superman use his powers for good or evil? Should he tell stereotypical love interest that he’s a superhero or keep it to himself?
There’ll be external conflicts – does he kill the first poor thug that mugs him post-transformation? How does he deal with the evil genius? What happens when there’s five minutes before the energy vampires release their global pandemic?
This is important for your worldbuilding as it is for your plot. Why? Because the world is simply a mirror image of the conflict highlighted in the chapter.
For instance; our guy is a superhero but he doesn’t realise it yet. He’s about to get jumped by a thug.
Where does this scene happen in your head, and what does it look like?
If you are like absolutely everyone on the planet, you imagine our guy walking down a narrow alley in the dark and you imagine a great big thug’s shadow falling on the floor in front of him.
There’s a reason for that; your brain naturally paints a picture that merges the situation with the environment. (Nobody imagines getting mugged in the middle of a nursery by a bunch of enraged toddlers.)
The scene naturally paints itself when you consider the conflict first.
Think Like A Screenwriter
You don’t need to build a full world.
Let’s assume you’re writing a stereotypical superhero novel. It’s going to be 50 chapters at most.
Now, you could create a whole world that your character sits in. Or, for the sake of finishing your book to a schedule (that, fantasy writers, is where you say you’ll publish a book on a certain date and it gets published on that date) you can simply say, “50 chapters means about 50 scenes.”
You don’t need to create a whole world. You need to think like a screenwriter or a set designer.
Say you’ve set your superhero fiction on a planet where everyone is getting their souls eaten by psychic vampires from the 4th dimension and the vampires are planning to take over once and for all.
Where does your superhero learn all of this?
Think about the scene from Star Wars where Han Solo is in the bar and he shoots that alien guy under the table.
Do you think the set designer thought about the consistency of all those weird alien jazz band players?
No… he thought, “This is a bar on an alien planet. How does it look like a bar from the Wild West mixed with some alien dudes?”
You’ve got fifty scenes in your world. Make the scenes look real by peppering the real world with weird idiosyncratic details from your perceived world, and you’re all the way there.
Lovecraft is the master of this; his short stories involve mostly nerdy guys walking around standard abandoned buildings, with 10% of each scene giving over to explaining why it’s not just a nerd walking around just a ruin or reading just an old book.
Fully Realised Characters = Fully Realised Worlds
If this seems too easy, then add in a little flavour for the sake of making it harder for yourself.
If you’re writing a novel, then there’ll probably be about five main characters who are fleshed out.
It’ll be a protagonist or two, a love interest, a primary antagonist and probably some meta-character that gives your character the real-deal about the world he’s bumbling through.
Each of those characters will inhabit a different world within your world.
For instance, let’s go back to the original Star Wars for a second. In those introductory scenes, the “world” is very different for Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Leia and Han Solo.
For Luke Skywalker, the Universe is vast and he’s very small and insignificant.
With Leia, everything is ordered and diplomatic– even when she is captured.
Han Solo is the opposite; his universe is chaotic and full of unsuspecting twists.
Finally, Darth Vader is surrounded at all points with dark, oppressive scenes.
Those all exist within the same world – or Universe at least – but the conflicts that the characters face (like we discuss above) are different, and so go their environments and the way they interact with them.
Final Thoughts
That’s everything you need to get started with worldbuilding. Remember, the world is there only to support and frame your story. It’s the characters and the obstacles they overcome that people care about. The world just helps.
Grab a couple of travel guides, read some weird conspiracy theories and list a bunch of scenes and how they differ from the world your reader lives in, and you’re good to go.