Why Your Fantasy World Feels Flat (And What to Do Before You Write Another Chapter)
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Do you ever feel like your world building should be working, but yet something just feels off? You’ve come up with kingdom names, you’ve drawn up a cool map and you might even have a whole magic system built. But still, for some reason, your story doesn’t feel right. Well, you’re not alone and this is actually one of the most common frustrations fantasy writers face when it comes to developing their worlds. Your world might actually be missing a key piece of its foundation in order to make it function. So, for today’s post, I’ll be talking about why your fantasy world feels flat and what to do before you start writing your next chapter.
Big news: I’ve finally launched one of the biggest world building toolkits for writers (and more) on my shop! The Ultimate Guide to World Building isn’t just your average, ordinary textbook or workbook. It’s a full workflow course packed into one book that teaches you everything from the basics to the niche details. You’ll get access to my 10+ years of world building and writing experience with tips, examples, ideas, and guiding questions to help you turn your world from an idea into a breathing universe!
What Most Writers Miss About World Building
World building isn’t just about creating maps and coming up with names for things. The idea of world building is that it gives your story structure, meaning, and logic that its grounded in. The logic doesn’t have to be real-world logic, but it’s logical to your world.
World building is about building a living, breathing system that connects your characters with your plot and everything in between.
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World building without proper planning leads to a situation where things just don’t feel right. Nothing feels connected and you’re not entirely sure what goes where and why. Even if you feel like that right now, it doesn’t mean that you’ve failed as a writer. What you need is a bit of a structured framework…
The Truth About Great World Building
For great world building, you need a system and a sort of blueprint. You need to know what to build first, what can wait, and how you can connect the world building to the rest of your story.
It sometimes takes a few tries before it really works out, but it’s important to get practice with this. For one, if you’re writing fantasy or romantasy, you really need to know how to make world building work for your story, because readers in those genres are expecting a lot from you in that.
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That’s why I’ve been building something absolutely massive for writers like you, because world building matters a lot to me and I want it to become a fun process for you too.
What You Can Do Right Now to Strengthen Your World
If you’re still drafting and know your world needs more depth, here are three quick questions to ask yourself:
- What’s the biggest tension in this world and who benefits from it?
- What belief or system would cause a character to be punished here?
- What would break this world’s logic and does my story accidentally do that?
If you’re not sure exactly how to answer these questions just yet, that’s perfectly fine! Keep reading because I’ve got a solution for you…
The Ultimate Worldbuilding Guide for Writers is Finally Here!
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on an intensive, major guide for writers and world building enthusiasts. Whether you’re writing fantasy or romantasy or sci-fi or whatever it is that you’re writing, creating an immersive world matters a lot to your genre.
The Ultimate World Building Guide includes hundreds of pages, tons of worksheets, details on creating cultures, religions, maps, and so much more.
You’ll learn how to avoid info-dumping, how to properly research for world building, and how to integrate your world with your story. It’s not just about building, it’s also about infusing the world into the pages of your book.
The guide is finally out and you can pick up a copy to start working on it right away!
If you want updates on when it’s coming out, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter and that way, you’ll get updates, insights, and discount codes that I’ll be dropping every now and then:
Also, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga!