The creation process of a new world.

[Will0810]

Hi all lovely people on here!
This is just my third post, and will start by saying I'm so happy to have become a member on here, so many great tips, tricks and feedback.

I'm just a bit curious about how other one do create their world, if of course they have one for their story. I started by sketching up a basic shape for my world, began making out city's, name for those, industry and story's/histories about the different city's/towns and villages. Then began working on a religion and a starting event of my univers the story's behind the gods and all that stuff. Now that I have all the starting done, city's and maps I began to write, write and more writing to give my world lives, but felt I was missing something. A language, but now I don't know how far to go with this, have been making rules and ways to say the word how to say them how to write them meanings and sentence rules.

How or what ways things are you doing to make your worlds feel alive ??

Have you created a language and how far did u take it?

Hope you all have it great !
Best of luck with your projects
William

 

[CMBright]

I am a pantser, so I tend to just start writing stories. At some point, I will need to think about how the world affects the characters because of the characters affecting the world.

At that point, I start thinking about locations specific to the story, about how the history of the world came about, the rules/laws of the society and why they have those rules and/or laws, and so on. The closer a world is to ours, the less world building I do.

One project does have a conlang, but I only have two words that are created and used.

 

[CMBright]

When I write short stories, I don't do any intentional world building. I only do world building for novel length projects.

 

[Al X.]

By the question, I would presume you are referring to a fictional fantasy world versus real places. I use real places in my novels, although I may be a little vague on exact locations when they involve occupied street addresses. So for me it's not 'building a world,' rather, being descriptive of a place or places.

 

[Will0810]

By the question, I would presume you are referring to a fictional fantasy world versus real places. I use real places in my novels, although I may be a little vague on exact locations when they involve occupied street addresses. So for me it's not 'building a world,' rather, being descriptive of a place or places.

Yeah sorry mostly meant, fantasy world. Because that's what I can refer to with my own project. But of cause I guess even if using real places, you still need the writing to make it real for the reader. But again I'm still very much a novice

 

[benbenberi]

New worlds for me tend to begin with one strong image or scene that intrigues me enough to keep thinking about it. Then I have to figure out more about where that scene is happening, and who the characters are in it. Then I have to figure out what happened to create that scene/image, and what it might lead to. Then I have to figure out what kind of world/setting could create those circumstances, and what kinds of story might grow there. And bit by bit a universe accretes to support the story and characters that emerge from my initial mind-image (which may or may not make it into what I eventually write). Tools like maps and genealogies and theologies etc may eventually become useful, and once I've created them they may inspire more ideas or story possibilities, but they're seldom at the core of what I'm working on.

 

[Infinimata]

My worlds begin with what's sometimes called a "normative question", or a "what-if". That what-if typically ends up describing a world that is at the cusp of a change involving that what-if -- the end of one big thing and the beginning of another. All the characters that emerge are products of that rupture -- they embody the tensions between the old and new ways of things. Some are determined to bring in the new; some are dead-set on preserving what they have; some are caught between; some are just along for the ride; some are onlookers.

Embodying and examining the tensions, the stresses that exist in this what-if are how I bring things to life. Stories are about change (even if on the smallest of scale), so the changes are what I look to for the inspirations.

All of this would be a precusor to anything like geography, linguistics, religion, or any of the rest of it.

 

[Norsebard]

William

How or what ways things are you doing to make your worlds feel alive ??

Well, in the Fantastic stories I've written, I started with the lead characters, actually. Once the kind of folks I felt like exploring in such a setting were ready, I created a world for them - mythology / folklore, various geographic stuff, arts and crafts, flora and fauns ( ), power structure among politicians or royalty, military chains of command... all those things. I'm a SpecFic Sword & Sorcery writer at heart, so everything needs to be colorful and traditional.

I've never tried to create a language apart from various cusswords.


Norsebard

 

[Jinks]

I tend to base my locations off of real places, but then alter them to fit my world. I based my main city off of one I visited once just cause I liked the look of it and its environment. Then I will draw small maps for locations in the city and surrounding area. I just mapped out a waterfall.

As for language, I haven't constructed one yet, but I am a polyglot. When I do create one, and I will, I will base it off the different language rules I know. The main reason I haven't created it yet is that I don't know if I want it to be a harsh sounding language or a softer one.

 

[TreyC]

I'll admit that I'm on my first draft of my first fantasy novel, so take this with a grain of salt. But I find visualization tools to be a real accelerator. Here are some of the tools I've experimented with:

Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator

https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/

Absolutely love this! In my opinion, the learning curve here is a bit steep (youtube helps) to really make it practical and valuable, but it has helped me add significant depth to my world, both in the outlining and the drafting process.

Inkarnate

https://inkarnate.com/

I've played with this a couple of times. I see a lot of potential value in building towns, dungeons, etc, but I haven't truly adopted it yet. My vision is that I can use content built here as part of my newsletters, social, etc, but that's still TBD

Campfire

https://www.campfirewriting.com/

Great 'modules' for timelines, arcs, maps, etc. It organizes your data and insights in a unique and differentiated way. I had hoped to use Campfire for drafting my second manuscript, but it's currently lacking a meaningful backup option. This was a deal-killer for me. So I'm currently trying to figure out if I can create templates and structure in Scrivener that replaces enough of this functionality that I can move away from Campfire. My skepticism aside, I think everyone will see different values from this tool and they have limited functionality of all their modules for a free trial, so I'd suggest testing it for yourself

Tools are obviously only one small piece to the puzzle, but hopefully these give you a few ideas. Good luck!

 

[jayelmitchell]

I've created a few "mother-tongue" sayings, but as for making a full-on language, not so much. If linguistics is your jam then have at it, knock yourself out. But don't feel it's expected, because language is really complex and nuanced and all of those things that make it such a difficult undertaking. When it comes down to it, only hardcore geeks (those awesome people) will care about the language you make up. Most people will be far more interested in your story, so fleshing out the things that directly color your world would probably be a better use of your energy in my opinion.

I also don't recall if I've suggested WorldAnvil to you in a previous post or not. It might be something you find interesting. It's a worldbuilding program that you can set up like a wiki, with a timeline feature for building history, and the templates gave me some jumping off points as to where to go for fantasy worldbuilding. So it's probably worth checking out if you haven't yet.

There's also a couple sites that help you build a fantasy calendar, so that's pretty neat. I can't recall the name of any off the top of my head, but they're useful if you want to make up your own weekdays and holidays and months and such.

Also, there's something called "worldbuilders disease." Pretty much where you get so involved in your worldbuilding that you never actually get around to writing. Now, there's nothing wrong with worldbuilding just as a hobby, but if you mean to actually produce a story, don't let yourself get so sidetracked by making up languages and calendars that you never actually get to writing! It's totally easy to get caught up in worldbuilding because it can be really exciting. Just keep in mind, a lot of what you come up with isn't going to end up in your story anyway

 

[MaeZe]

I use Pinterest because I do better describing things I can see than the images in my head. So far they've had everything I had in mind and then some. There are people on the site who've posted images which are ever so more creative than my brain starts with. Pinterest is especially productive when it comes to the future and science fiction scenes.

 

[dickson]

Does building a universe count? I have written three short stories so far that take place in an alternate cosmology which is static. Instead of a Big Bang, you have a Central Fire. There are other differences from our cosmos as well, some of which make for interesting plot devices.

As to inventing a language, haven’t done that, but sounds like fun. I’d go with something uninflected like Mandarin or Japanese, both of which tongues are admirably free of most of what we who speak English consider grammar. I might go so far as to call them rational, but that may be a bridge too far for any human language.

 

[CMBright]

I am more likely to create body language for non human characters than languages. The aliens loosely based on cephalopods were fun since their skin would change colors with various emotions. I remember picking a nice yellow for concentration and focus on tasks.

 

[Dragon Writer Luc]

My world started with a "What if?" applied to a different tale I was reading, and then it just kept going. However, once I had a more concrete setup for the world... I made an online roleplay based on it. The idea was that if I could get people interested (which I did, slowly), I could get them to do the "You didn't think of this yet" for me. That is what prompted me to rethink a lot of the magic, some of the world's history, and quite a bit of the technology.

As for a map or language, I thought that the real world was good enough. I use Google Maps for place names, Wikipedia for populations (then adjusted based on how I think it would fit the world), and all the languages are real ones. Religions are the same as normal plus some fantasy ones that are basically worship or fear of great unknown/poorly understood powers.

 

[mccardey]

"What if?"

- is a wonderful question

 

[Will0810]

William



Well, in the Fantastic stories I've written, I started with the lead characters, actually. Once the kind of folks I felt like exploring in such a setting were ready, I created a world for them - mythology / folklore, various geographic stuff, arts and crafts, flora and fauns ( ), power structure among politicians or royalty, military chains of command... all those things. I'm a SpecFic Sword & Sorcery writer at heart, so everything needs to be colorful and traditional.

I've never tried to create a language apart from various cusswords.


Norsebard

Would really like to read those fantastic story's and I too love a good sword & sorcery story

 

[Will0810]

I tend to base my locations off of real places, but then alter them to fit my world. I based my main city off of one I visited once just cause I liked the look of it and its environment. Then I will draw small maps for locations in the city and surrounding area. I just mapped out a waterfall.

As for language, I haven't constructed one yet, but I am a polyglot. When I do create one, and I will, I will base it off the different language rules I know. The main reason I haven't created it yet is that I don't know if I want it to be a harsh sounding language or a softer one.

Sounds as a very good idea, to base locations of real ones, and just change to match the story and setting.

 

[Will0810]

I've created a few "mother-tongue" sayings, but as for making a full-on language, not so much. If linguistics is your jam then have at it, knock yourself out. But don't feel it's expected, because language is really complex and nuanced and all of those things that make it such a difficult undertaking. When it comes down to it, only hardcore geeks (those awesome people) will care about the language you make up. Most people will be far more interested in your story, so fleshing out the things that directly color your world would probably be a better use of your energy in my opinion.

I also don't recall if I've suggested WorldAnvil to you in a previous post or not. It might be something you find interesting. It's a worldbuilding program that you can set up like a wiki, with a timeline feature for building history, and the templates gave me some jumping off points as to where to go for fantasy worldbuilding. So it's probably worth checking out if you haven't yet.

There's also a couple sites that help you build a fantasy calendar, so that's pretty neat. I can't recall the name of any off the top of my head, but they're useful if you want to make up your own weekdays and holidays and months and such.

Also, there's something called "worldbuilders disease." Pretty much where you get so involved in your worldbuilding that you never actually get around to writing. Now, there's nothing wrong with worldbuilding just as a hobby, but if you mean to actually produce a story, don't let yourself get so sidetracked by making up languages and calendars that you never actually get to writing! It's totally easy to get caught up in worldbuilding because it can be really exciting. Just keep in mind, a lot of what you come up with isn't going to end up in your story anyway

Totally get what u mean, and yeah it's easy for me to get sidetracked, drawing out portraits of my characters, houses buildings and cities.. The language thats just stupid that I started playing with that.. but thanks for the tip of world anvil, wil differently try and take a look on that.

 

[Will0810]

Does building a universe count? I have written three short stories so far that take place in an alternate cosmology which is static. Instead of a Big Bang, you have a Central Fire. There are other differences from our cosmos as well, some of which make for interesting plot devices.

As to inventing a language, haven’t done that, but sounds like fun. I’d go with something uninflected like Mandarin or Japanese, both of which tongues are admirably free of most of what we who speak English consider grammar. I might go so far as to call them rational, but that may be a bridge too far for any human language.

Sounds amazing with a universe and alternative big bang

 

[dickson]

Sounds amazing with a universe and alternative big bang

It was actually explored by cosmologists as an alternative to the hot Big Bang fifty years ago and more.

 

[Will0810]

It was actually explored by cosmologists as an alternative to the hot Big Bang fifty years ago and more.

Love to learn something new ! Awesome

 

[DorianFrost]

I generally build my worlds out from the concept/scene/character(s)/premise I'm starting with.

Basically, once I have the core concepts I need to get the first draft started (how much that is really depends on the story - I had to figure out a fair bit of the politics between three of the countries in the area of my current WIP, as well as the magic system and the likely impacts and implications of the magic that exists in the area, and may have wandered down a bit of rabbit-hole of the world's ancient history as involves some long forgotten gods, before starting), I add further to the worldbuilding as it becomes relevant to what I'm writing.

With languages, I only go into that as much as I have to to make a consistent naming system for characters and places (though I may have made simplified IPA charts for the main countries in my current story).

ETA: I should note, this doesn't mean the only worldbuilding I have is that directly related to the story I'm telling; in the process of figuring the things I mentioned out, I usually end up branching off into topics more tenuously related because they occur to me as a I go. I just try to focus on the immediately relevant so that I don't end up never starting my draft at all.

 

[Zachisrad51]

The best advice I've heard is to start with one or two things that make the world different from ours, then weave those things into all aspects of the world. Although I tend to stray from this, and start by throwing together a bunch of things that I think would be cool, then add/flesh out concepts or take away as needed.

I like making encyclopedias for worlds, drafting history books, etc. Helps me flesh out the world separate from my first draft, so that I'm not info dumping in the actual story.

 

[CMBright]

Here's one way:

First of a series on world building.