World building is the creation of a new world, a new setting. It’s the process of creating a believable and plausible world where your characters can live and play out their stories.
World building can be done in many ways. It can be as simple as creating a map or city layout and filling it in, giving it life through simple details like what kind of trees grow there or what kind of animals are native to that region.
What Is World Building
What Is World Building?
World building is a process that writers use to create fictional settings for their stories. World building can be as simple as making a list of your character’s favorite foods or as complicated as creating an entire world with its own history, geography, and culture.
The purpose of world building is to give your story depth and realism by allowing readers to experience the setting through your characters’ eyes. You can also build worlds for different genres and types of writing.
For example, if you’re writing a science fiction story, it’s important to understand how technology might impact daily life in the future and how that might affect your characters’ decisions and actions.
It can also take on more complex forms like adding history and culture, describing how things work and how they came about, even adding entire religions if you so desire.
World building is not just for novels or movies; it’s also for games. Just like writers create worlds for novels or filmmakers create worlds for movies, game developers create worlds for their games too!
The campaign setting is one example of this; it’s basically everything that isn’t simply gameplay (and sometimes even gameplay).
World building can take many different forms, including:
- Fantasy: A world filled with magic, talking animals and mythical creatures.
- Science fiction: An alternative history where technology has changed the course of human history.
- Steampunk: A mix of 19th century Victorian England and 19th century American West, set in an alternate history where steam power has replaced mechanical engines.
World Building Purpose In Writing
World building is an important part of any story. It can help readers develop a mental picture of a world they’re reading about, and it can also be used to give readers a deeper understanding of the characters in your story.
The best way to use world building is through description.
World building works best when you describe the background of your story in great detail. You need to give readers enough information that they have an image in their minds but not so much that they get bored or confused.
You can use this method of world building throughout your entire story, or you can break it up into sections, depending on how long each section is going to be.
For this lesson, we’ll look at how to build up a setting with descriptive details that will lead readers naturally into the next section of your story without confusing them or becoming boring for them before then!
World Building Tips In Writing
World building is one of the most important parts of writing. It helps you develop your world and characters, describe the setting, make things more realistic and believable, and ultimately build a story that readers will enjoy reading.
World Building Tips In Writing
World building is different from creating a setting for your story. First of all, world building is an intrinsic part of writing any kind of story. You need to know where you are going before you can get there.
Secondly, it’s about making sure that all details are consistent with what you know about the world in which your characters live or move through. And finally, it’s about creating everything; not just the plot but also people, places and things (like food) that are integral to the story.
When World-Building Matters In Writing
One of the most common questions writers get is how to create a world that readers will want to keep coming back to.
This is a tough question to answer, because it requires you to think about building things out of nothing — which is hard enough for me, but even harder for other people.
But I’ll try.
First, let’s talk about why world-building matters in writing.
One reason is that it lets us explore our own personal interests and beliefs. The best fiction always has something to say about its world (or worlds), even if it’s not directly about the characters in it.
For example, if I were writing a book about a time traveler who went back to ancient Rome and found himself transported into the middle of an epic battle between the Greeks and Persians, then my readers would be interested in learning more about that period in history.
And if my protagonist got involved with someone who was actually there at the time, they’d be more likely to believe him when he told them his story.
World-building also helps us avoid repeating ourselves too much — which can happen when authors use the same set of ideas over and over again without expanding on them or changing them up.
How To Start World-Building In Writing
World-building is a big part of any story. It’s the part that’s supposed to make you think, “Wow, I could be there!”
How do you do it? Where do you start? And, hey, how do you know if your world-building efforts are actually working?
I’m here to help. I’ve been building worlds in my writing since before I knew what a word processor was (seriously). Here are some tips from me on how to build your own world in your writing:
1) Start with a blank page. Write for as long as is necessary and don’t be afraid to let go of the scene or plot points that you’re working on (or even characters) once they seem like they’re no longer necessary. Just start over again and keep going until you have something that feels complete enough for your purposes (and then move on!).
2) Don’t worry about being perfect from the start — just get something down on paper first! You can always revise it later if needed.
3) Remember why you started writing in the first place — it’s not just about getting words out onto the page so much as it is about making sure that what comes next makes sense within the context of what came before it
Why World-Building Is So Important
World-building is important because it gives you a chance to think about your characters, their motivations and how they got where they are. It can also help you figure out how the world works and what makes the magic in the world tick.
World-building is not just for authors; it’s for everyone who creates things. If you’re an artist, you need to know what kind of canvas you’re working with; if you’re a musician, you need to know how an instrument was made; if you’re a writer, it’s easy enough to create a world map in your head and then fill it in later on.
But when we get into speculative fiction, we take things even further: our worlds are often full of magic systems and religions and social structures that don’t exist anywhere else. These are things we want to know about before we get started writing about them.
Building A Fantasy World In Your Writing
Fantasy worlds are a great way to create interesting characters, explore new ideas and make your writing stand out from the crowd. But building a fantasy world can seem like a daunting task; how do you start?
The first step is to think about what your character wants to achieve in the story. This can be anything from getting closer to the villain, finding love or saving their village.
Once you know what they want, you need to figure out how they’re going to achieve it. Who is going to help them? How are they going to get there? What obstacles are in their way?
You also need to think about what kind of world this is going to be set in. How does this relate back to the main character’s quest? What sort of place is it? Is it flat or mountainous? Is it built on an island or floating in space? These details will help bring your setting alive and give it depth.
Great Examples Of World-Building
World-building is the process of creating a world that is distinct from ours, and yet still compatible with our own. It involves creating a story that takes place in this new world and explains how it came to be what it is.
World-building can take many forms, but there are certain elements that all worlds share. These elements include:
History – The history of your world must be established before you can create anything else about it. The history should explain why things exist as they do and how they came to be that way.
Magic – Magic is the key element of any world you create. You must decide if magic exists in your world or not, and then how it works. This will help you determine whether or not your world has a science fiction or fantasy feel to it.
Society – Your society will be based on an existing place or culture (or both), so make sure that you know what people do for fun, what kind of jobs they have, who does what kind of work, etc…
Culture – Each culture has its own customs, traditions, language and beliefs that make up its character. This can also affect technology in your world if it’s different from ours…
Hard Worldbuilding Vs. Soft Worldbuilding
Hard worldbuilding is the kind that involves more planning and research than soft worldbuilding. Hard worldbuilding can take a lot of time, but it’s also rewarding and fun. Soft worldbuilding is the kind that doesn’t require much of either.
Hard worldbuilding involves setting up your characters, creating their backstories and history. You’ll need to create a strong sense of place for your story by creating a detailed history for the world your characters live in.
This includes things like geography and climate, as well as political structures, religious beliefs and more.
Hard worldbuilding is what you use when you want to tell a story set in your own fictional universe. It’s where most authors spend most of their time when they write fantasy novels or sci-fi stories set in our own world.
Soft worldbuilding is what you use when you’re writing something that doesn’t involve any actual hard work beyond brainstorming ideas for story concepts and character traits or traits for your characters’ worlds.
World Building Devices
World building is the process of creating a unique world that you can explore. It’s one of the most exciting parts of roleplaying games, and it’s something that any DM worth their salt should be doing.
There are many ways to create a world to explore. One of my favorites is to use maps and miniatures. A map is an excellent way to visualize how your characters will move through a space and where they might find things (or someone else).
The miniature figures help show off what resources might be available in a given area and may even have magical powers associated with them (such as dragons or elementals).
You can also use both maps and miniatures for your world building when you want more of an interactive experience. For example, your players may want to know where the town hall is located so that they can go there for meetings and other events. If this happens frequently enough, you could even set up some rules for having meetings inside the town hall itself!
The World-Building Of Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a film that has a lot of world-building. The film is set in 2049, but it’s not so much about the future as it is about the past. And yet, even though its setting is not our own reality, it still feels like part of our reality.
The world-building of Blade Runner is especially important because most people don’t understand its significance. They think that Blade Runner is just a sci-fi movie and nothing more than that.
But if you look at the way the film presents itself, you can see that there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
The story begins with Officer K ( Harrison Ford) being born in 2019, which was when he was assigned to investigate a case involving genetically engineered humans called Replicants.
He also met several other characters during his time at work — including Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) who was an LAPD officer who hunted Replicants and made sure they were destroyed before they could harm anyone else or take over society through espionage and terrorism.
The purpose of this article isn’t to talk about the plot of Blade Runner but rather to explore why people might enjoy watching this movie so much
The Worldbuilding Of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is an interesting game, for various reasons. One of them is the worldbuilding, and I want to talk about it.
We’ve seen Deus Ex’s universe before in Human Revolution, but there are some new details here that help make this one feel more fully realized than its predecessor. The setting is definitely no longer a big-box store with a few doors and some racks of clothes; this one feels like a city where you can go anywhere, and potentially do anything.
It’s also a city where you can see the effects of the future on everyday life — or at least what people think might be the effects of those futures. There are plenty of signs of the coming revolution in the form of riots and protests happening around you, but there are other signs as well: billboards advertising new products that turn out to be part of IHRSA’s line-up or adverts for a new virtual reality system called Aug Palisade (the latter being one of my favorite Deus Ex things ever).
What Is World Building – Wrap Up
What is world building? It’s the act of creating a detailed, believable world. A world that feels real and authentic to its readers.
World building is not just about creating a setting for your story, but also about creating a setting that has depth and texture. A setting that is rich and full of detail so that it feels like it could exist outside of the pages of your book.
World building can be as simple as describing what happens in the morning or at night when you are home from work, or as complex as describing a setting for an entire book series.
The goal of world building is to make the reader feel like they are living inside your book’s universe, just like they would if they were there themselves!