Exploring

Welcome to the third past of the World-Building series! 

Today we'll be looking at the second point of the original five I outlined here. This is the Exploration stage, a mixture of writing, reading, and other creative work to help you make choices that support your creation. As before I'll be using my Solomon's Shadow setting as an example, because I'm actually exploring the idea at the moment. 

1) Connect the Dots: How my discovery process starts, is writing down as many things I can think of related to the concept. It's of mind mapping, I suppose, which allows me to expand and deepen the ideas and see if they've got enough substance for me to use in creating stories or RPG plots. The important thing is not to think about what you're writing down too much - just let the words flow out and try to capture everything. Ignore the false distinctions of genre and even if you meant to create something in a specific area at this stage. This process will help you determine what you want to use, and identify areas of research. 

For instance, with Solomon's Shadow, I wrote down the following "A Demon haunted 1920's New York" and highlighted 'Demon', '1920's', and 'New York' and then mind mapping from that with lines to link concepts. The concepts I identified sat across a broad range ranging from Prohibition, speakeasies, rum-running, organised crime, the Jazz Age, the birth of the nightclub and the first sky scrapers being built in New York for the 1920's part of the sentence. I also have to consider the biases and injustices of the period: the racism, sexism, homophobia, and antisemitism that was baked into the 1920's. I suppose, too, that means I have to ask if Fascism was present in the USA during the period as it was in much of Europe, as a reaction to the establishment of the USSR in 1917. 

Taking the demons part of the sentence, there's a confusing set of scribbles where I'm still working things out. My notes here automatically touch on Solomon, the Israelite King reputed to have had a palace built by demons. That introduces a strong element of sorcery and the idea that there are demonic slaves doing the bidding of humans, probably unwillingly. That might suggest that there are imprisoned demons, perhaps in fetishes (the magical, not rude, kind). I automatically flashed to sorcerers with pieces of jewellery that they can use to cast 'spells', or at least command demons from as my image of magic for this series is that it's something that takes a long time cast and relies upon complex rituals. 

Alongside this, I have notes of a demon character (hence the confusion) who's a broker working on Wall Street as well as being something of a criminal kingpin. Quite clearly I don't think all the demons are slaves to humanity and perhaps this figure is a strange mixture of slave trader and emancipator - willing to sell their fellows out but also trying to free them if it means there are souls to reap. 

Clearly many of these ideas will need work to co-exist in the same universe, and some of them won't work at all. Eventually, this stage has to turn into throwing ideas out because you can't rationalise them. Killing your darlings is a part of any creative process, I'm afraid. 

2) Picture This: Find images, footage, and make maps and images to create a bank of images to draw from can be a hugely helpful part of your world-building. Being able to picture your world is a boon to any creator, and honestly, basing your work on the real world is a great way to do that. There are lots of websites that can help with finding images:  Unsplash, the London Metropolitan Museum's Image Resources, Google Images, and others can all be useful here. In addition, you could always try using an AI image maker, but I'm quite torn on that area. I've used the Bing AI image maker in the past, and it sometimes provided what I needed at that moment, but I'm conscious there's a great deal of controversy over their use. At the end of the day, I'd suggest going with your conscience, I'm trying to inspire you not set down hard and fast rules for how to go about your business.

If you're writing Fantasy and have the time to learn how to make good maps, there are plenty of cartography programmes and sites available, ranging from Inkarnate, Donjon, and Profantasy's Campaign Cartographer. There are also Campfire and World Anvil (along with many others if you want to fold your map making, note taking, development, and writing into one place. 

The benefits for you are that you get to know more about your world and that will allow you to craft stronger narratives for your audience, even if that audience is just yourself. Your descriptions will be stronger, and you may give other people a way to feel the reality of what you're talking about. 

3) Go Deep: By this point you're hopefully getting a sense of what you're doing and the gaps in what you know are starting to show. You know what you don't know and also know how to address that... research. It could be anything ranging from how women rode horses in the 16th Century to what other cultures have said about dragons. Let me be clear, setting your story in an entirely fictitious world doesn't save you from having to research, in part because even games and stories that are apparently set in the real world are actually set in a fictitious version of it. 

At the risk of insulting you, compile a list first. It's better to do that than realise you've completely forgotten an area you thought would be useful. For Solomon's Shadow, mine looks like this:

• New York in the 1920s 
• Prohibition
• Occult architecture in the 1920s
• Rules governing the stock exchange in the period
• Organised crime 
• Masonry
• Kabbalah
• Demons and the occult
• Magical societies 
• Social attitudes in the 1920s
• Judaism
• Police corruption
• Socio-economic realities of NYC in the '20s
• Gnosticism
• Polish immigration to the USA in the period
• American Fascism in the period
• The materiality of the period - clothes, guns, food, machines, and so on. 

While some of this is designed to create stories, a lot of it is just about getting the details right and making sure my characters don't end up using a machine that wasn't invented a decade later. Getting the details wrong will throw people out of my setting unless I obliquely state that something got invented early. 

The good news is that nobody's going to mark your research so it's okay to start with Wikipedia. It's not the last place you should look though, because Wikipedia can be... variable in reliability despite the site's best efforts. I'd suggest reaching for books or documentaries at this point, but you can also draw details from drama, which is really getting someone else to do your work for you. They can't afford to get details wrong either, so you're benefitting from their diligence. For example, I fully intend to watch the Great Gatsby again as part of developing Solomon's Shadow into a stronger setting.

4) Develop Your Characters: No matter how much you research the characters will be what sells your story so you need to know who they are. I don't mean in the sense of "this is Bob, he's a mechanic" but a deeper knowledge. What does Bob look like, what sort of clothes does he wear, and how did he become a mechanic? What sort of music does he like, does he believe in a god, is he married and if so does he have kids? What are his parents like? Building a well rounded character can sell them to your reader much better. 

For instance Mac, my PI for these stories, grew up in Harlem, with parents who were always working so he was largely raised by his Grandparents alongside his siblings. He had some schooling, but was never a great student. He did, however, grow up to be a strong, tough young man and was 20 when the USA entered World War One. While he wasn't keen to enlist, a friend of his, Winston Robinson, persuaded him and they signed up together and were placed in the 396th Infantry Regiment and fought in the Second Battle of the Marne, alongside the French Army. There, Winston died - shot by a German sniper during the battle. Mac never forgot his friend, and keeps his friend's cross as a memento. After the war he returned home, working manual jobs for a while as he adjusted back to civilian life. While not as badly affected by his experiences as many of his fellow soldiers (who were often left to rot by the US state) he was still plagued by nightmares and found it difficult to hold down steady work. Fortunately, a friend of his suggested he become a private eye, and though Mac was sceptical about the suggestion he tried it out and found that it wasn't as difficult as he'd imagined. Mentored by an elderly man - Freeman Booker - he learned the trade and in 1923 set up his own business. 

If Mac had any faith before he enlisted, the war burned it out of him, and he's deeply cynical about God and any suggestion of salvation, saying that "If there was a God in Heaven, he'd have interceded in that damn war." 

His experiences have left him hard bitten and disillusioned. He owns very little and often struggles to make ends meet. His cases have largely focused on Harlem and the African American community there, earning him both friends and enemies in the area. He isn't part of the Harlem Renaissance, but has some contacts who are. 

That's as much as I've got so far, but already the character feels more rounded than he did before I started writing that. 

5) Write snippets: Finally, and really echoing the point above, write. It doesn't really matter what you're creating, the more you write and explore the world through your writing, the more solid it will become. Doing this will expose any inconsistencies within your work, allowing you to address them. It will also deepen your understanding of what you're making and add to the lore you have to work with. It's funny how things can just pop up out of nowhere, but also very rewarding. 

I confess I haven't started this process for Solomon's Shadow yet, but will post whatever I create when I do. 

World-building is an iterative process, and the exploration stage is where your ideas truly begin to take shape. Whether you’re writing a novel, designing an RPG, or crafting stories just for fun, taking time to brainstorm, research, and visualise will deepen your connection to your world—and your audience’s too.

What’s your next step?
Start brainstorming your own ideas today. Share a snippet, map, or detail about your world in the comments—I’d love to hear what you’re creating! Let’s inspire each other.