World Building is defined loosely as the idea of creating a world while conceptualizing and designing it. All in all, world building is most certainly a very complex part of the writing/designing process and needs a great deal of attention made towards it.
In my novels, world building is what allows for the universes I design to flourish while making sense. Once you have an understanding of what it is you are creating, it will make complete sense. Make no mistake, world building is not a simple process AT ALL. However, there are a few starter tips and tricks I can provide you that can help facilitate your world building journey.
Here’s an ultimate beginner’s guide on world-building, what it is, and how you can get started!
What are the components of World Building?
This is a bit of a simple one to cover, as the basic building blocks of designing a world are pretty straightforward. You will need to consider the following:
- Earth or not?
- Species
- Culture
- Language
- Religion
- Economy (this is a bit more complicated. I’ll explain why later)
- Political situation
- Lore/backstory that shows how the world developed over time
- Technology
- Etc…
Now that we’ve got a basic list, let’s dive a bit deeper into this topic. Of course, not too deep! You’re here to learn the basics, and that’s exactly what I’m going to give you. I know the list can seem a bit daunting, but the more you practice developing worlds, the easier it will become.
1. Which Approach Should You Take When World-Building?
By approach, I mean the following: Should you start with the galaxy and then go down to the details, or should you start with the details and go from there?
You see, both of these are very legitimate ways to work on world building. It all comes down to personal preference at the end of the day. I can’t just decide which one you should do, because it really does depend on what your project is.
However, if I had to pick, I would choose to start small and then go up. I typically start with the character, but I don’t develop them immediately. I start with the basics of where the character lives, what the social situation is like, etc…
Once you get an idea of how you like to start your stories, this decision will just come naturally on its own. So don’t worry too much.
2. To Earth or not to Earth
This all comes down to what you want from your story. Do you want this to be a SciFi story? A fantasy story? It really depends. The most popular genres in which world building is typically heavily emphasized are fantasy and SciFi. For example: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Way of Kings…I think you get the idea. A lot of hardcore, large and epic stories typically have VERY complex worlds.
For your first project, please do not try to make a LOTR-type thing. It’s going to overwhelm you. Unless you want to take on a challenge. Then, I say go for it. But be ready. It’s not that easy.
So, Earth is a pretty safe and easy choice to use for your world. You don’t necessarily need to develop it much. You may change the way it looks, but for the most part, all the nitty gritty details are taken care of for you. However, if you want to go beyond Earth, it’s a bit trickier. For one, you have to determine if this new world will be 100% different, or if you want to basically import the idea of Earth into it without calling it Earth. Maybe you’ll have an alien species on it or something.
The little details are up to you, but choose something you feel your world will work best in. In my series, The Fallen Age Saga, it’s Earth, but there are characters from alien planets that have their own backstories. However, my series is large and it’s most certainly not my first jab at world building, so it’s taken me some time before I reached that level of complexity. If you want some inspiration, go ahead and check out my Pinterest boards, which might provide you with some boosts in this category.
3. Species
This one isn’t too difficult if you’re just sticking to Earth. However, if you’re writing a high fantasy or SciFi story and you want to include different creatures, aliens, mystical stuff, etc… you need to know what your main species is and what the secondary ones are.
By main species, I mean the species that your character hails from. For example, the main character of The Fallen Age Saga is called The Nightmage (I’m keeping this guide spoiler free), and he is a creature borne of fire. He’s obviously not human, but the species he comes from is *similar* enough to humans while staying their own thing.
Start with the basic concept: What does this species look like? What are their unique features/characteristics? Do they have arms? Legs? If so, how many? These are questions you should be asking yourself when deciding what your main species looks like.
Once you get this step down, you can design more species until you have your desired count of species types.
I have a pretty comprehensive guide on this topic, so go check it out!
4. Culture
You have a culture, so you already have an understanding of what culture means. However, developing one for your world building project is a bit different. This can be either super complicated or super easy. It really depends on how you want to design your worlds. Let me give you a good example from a TV show called Goblin Slayer. The world of Goblin Slayer is clearly based off of Europe, but it combines several European cultures together while developing a unique culture of itself.
The pieces and parts of culture are complicated. There’s music, food, clothing, language, etc… This is really an umbrella term for many pieces we will cover in this article.
Let’s look at the main protagonist of Attack on Titan: Eren Yeager. His name sounds German, the city he grew up in seems to be German in nature, a lot of the soundtrack is influenced by German. It’s safe to say that Haijme Isayama took inspiration from Germany to create the world of Attack on Titan.
Most cultures in speculative fiction stories are not going to be 100% unique. There will always be something borrowed from real life. That’s fine, but make sure you know exactly what culture you’re going for.
I’ll give one more example: In my series, the main alien species–The Ones Above–have several tribes. The protagonist is from the Shaytanurash tribe. They are based off of the Middle East and surrounding regions. Their language is rooted in Semitic. They lived in the mountains on their home planet, which means that they are based off of mountain tribes that exist in places like Syria. You have to consider these ideas when developing your cultures.
Check out my guide on how you can design a culture for your world!
5. Language
Language is probably one of the hardest ones if you decide to start from scratch. It honestly depends on the level of complexity you’re going for when it comes to your language. Do you want to use a premade language? Do you want to create a conlang?
Conlanging is essentially the process of developing a fictional language by taking inspiration from an established language or language family. Like I mentioned in the last point, the Shaytanurash have a Semitic language. If you want to know what that sounds like, look up Arabic, Hebrew, etc… These languages have certain letters and pronunciations not seen in English.
In my case, conlanging is not a major piece of the story. It’s more of a fun little thing I threw in there. However, if you’re going to write scriptures or something in your language, I recommend researching the language families and figuring out what you would like to use.
You can use subreddits like r/conlangs to help you out even more!
This song below is from an anime called Berserk (a SUPER dark fantasy–not for the faint of heart). It uses a fake language in this song! I definitely recommend giving it a listen, as it’s interesting to see how a language can impact the world you’re designing.
6. Religion
This is a fun one in my opinion. You can use already established religions like Christianity, Islam, Satanism, Paganism, etc… However, I think that it’s creative to try and design a fake religion if you’re working with a more epic/dark/high fantasy world. I think it allows for the world to feel even more developed.
Try to design if you want monotheism or polytheism. Think about what scriptures are important to the people of your world. You can design as many or as little religions as you want. In fact, you can just omit religion if you want your world to be atheist. It’s up to you to design this part.
I recommend researching all sorts of religions and seeing how you want to make yours work.
7. Economy
This is a bit of a tough one. Economic systems aren’t as easy as you may think. You see, if you’re working with the modern/realistic world, you’re probably fine here. But if you’re designing a whole world from scratch, try to be really creative with this.
Think about how the currency works across different countries, for example. Do you want a free market? Controlled economy? Barter system? Service-based? Think about the world we live in now and then try to design your world with the ideas you see fit.
This is a harder one because if you have lots of countries or planets, you really need to decide how currency works in trade. If the economic portion is not super dire, then don’t worry too much about going very in depth. Just think about it and sprinkle in some ideas for world building flair!
8. Political situation
This is an easy one: What political system is your world? Monarchy? Democracy? Anarchy? Think about this and how your world interacts with other worlds. Design your political climate based off of what trajectory you see fit.
Here’s an example: In my series, the Ones Above have a monarchial system with a heavy emphasis on militarism. Therefore, they focus most of their political efforts on war and conquest. As such, their king is almost like a war general. Sometimes, they don’t even refer to their king as a king and rather as a lead general because all citizens are soldiers.
9. Lore
This is a fun one. If your world has some ancient history, come up with it! Perhaps there’s a reason why the world looks the way it does. Or why a certain war is occurring. You really need to hone in on this point, because nothing is worse than reading a book that doesn’t really offer a reason as to why the world is the way it is.
I’ll use the Ones Above again: They were tribalistic at the beginning and nomadic. They then got a new religious system and started accelerating their technological advancements. Then they started invading other planets. Of course, the lore is deeper, but I’m not going to spill all the details in this post!
10. Technology
This is an important one as well, as the way your world is designed can have an impact on what tech is available. If you’re going for the middle ages, I don’t think we should be seeing iPhones. Perhaps you have an alien species that is super advanced. Or a super primitive one.
Think about what fits best for your world and develop the technology around that. For example, if you have a military set in a SciFi planet, they probably will have some pretty advanced gear lying around. But if your military is comprised of knights and squires, then they’ll probably have axes and swords.
Conclusions
Okay! That was A LOT to get through. I have a feeling that you might be a *tad* overwhelmed right now. But don’t be! This is supposed to be a pretty intense and rigorous post so you can get the basic ideas down and then we’ll break it down over time. Eventually, once we’re done with this journey, you’ll be equipped with all the resources you need to fully develop an awesome world for your next project.
If you’re interested in reading my book to see how I handle some of the earlier parts of world building a saga, the link is right here:
Happy world building!