world building BASICS

I am certainly no expert, but these are some of the things I’ve learned in my writing journey.

I’ve never intentionally sat down with the goal of doing a deep dive into world building before writing a novel. In my debut series, I had a few characters, a half baked plot, and a lot of enthusiasm. Honestly, I never expected to write more than one book in the series, but ended up with four couples who needed their stories told.

By the end of the third book, I realized I had created some pretty significant plot holes in the series arc. But because I had already published the first two, I had absolutely no way to go back and fix them. I spent years trying to write my way out of it, and ended up bailing on the series, leaving it hanging. It haunts me to this day, but it provided some valuable lessons.

When I began to write, I knew the characters would be loosely based on vampires, there would be one true mates, and sharing blood would be important to not just the bonding, but to the couple being able to survive and have children. Beyond that, I didn’t think through much else. Because it is an urban fantasy, I didn’t have to think much about commerce, transportation, communication, weather, or maps.

But - all those things still came into play, and if I had taken the time to plan out how my characters interacted with the ‘real’ world, I could have plugged a couple plot holes before they became an issue later.

I also didn’t plot out the story AT ALL. At heart, I am a discovery writer, which usually means my first draft IS my plotting. In all my stories up to now, I wrote the story as it came to me. I describe it as following my characters around and writing down everything that happens. Once I have that, I then go back to do a self-developmental edit. I add or subtract scenes, change characters, and re-write entire plot lines.

It has worked well for me, and my brain does a decent job making ONE book make sense. But once additional story lines and plots come into play like what happens in a multi book series, the structure begins to fall apart due to a lack of pre-planning.

So, here are a few of the things I have been doing differently as I am planning to write a new series.

Instead of jumping into writing scenes, I took the time to plot out the novels. As it stands now, there are three full length and three origin novellas. For what it’s worth, I used the Snowflake Method to plot out the entire series, then I plotted each book. The way this system works is, you start with a single premise sentence, then you expand that sentence into a paragraph, then to a full page, then to 4-5 page synopsis, then break that down into scenes, then you write the scenes.

When I wrote the single paragraph synopsis, I broke each sentence from that paragraph down into the separate books. And repeated the process for each book until I had the 4 page synopsis for all 6 novels.

It feels a lot like discovery writing, because from the beginning you are writing the story, just in a very condensed version. It allows the idea time to breathe and grow at each step. *for more about this way of plotting -check out HOW TO WRITE USING THE SNOWFLAKE METHOD by Randy Ingermanson

BUT - No matter what method you use, even with the story line plotted out, there is still world building to do.

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World building is more than just maps and magic systems. Each day this week, let’s talk about some layers that can add depth and texture to your world.

Things like:

1. Magic systems

   1. Consequences vs Benefits

   2. Who gets magic and why?

   3. Is it common or rare?

   4. Is in internal or external?

2. Commerce and Trade

   1. Currency?

   2. Barter?

   3. What is valuable?

3. Transportation

   1. Magical

   2. Primitive

   3. Mechanical

4. Religion and/or Holidays -

   1. Tied to any of the other world building elements?

      1. Government

      2. Magic

      3. Commerce

      4. Dietary Restrictions/Food

   2. Schedule and work stoppage

      1. Do different classes celebrate differently?

      2. Do regions, countries or territories celebrate differently?

   3. Rival Religions or appropriated holidays

5. Government and Authority

   1. Structure

   2. Inherited

6. Food and sustenance - Adding specific foods or recipes can be a fun way to engage your readers!

   1. How and where is it grown or created?

   2. What is poison or to be avoided?

   3. Common vs rare foods

   4. Elite vs poor

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Reality is, even with all this planning, the long synopsizes I wrote will likely change as more details emerge and as characters begin interacting with the world that’s been created for them. But, this method will lay a solid foundation to build from and hopefully, prevent holes and massive re-writes to fix something later.

I would love to hear your ideas!

What kind of world building do you do?

Is there something you would add to this list?

Tell me in the comments.

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