Five Rules For World Building

World-building is one of the most creative and rewarding aspects of storytelling, allowing writers and gamers to craft spaces that bring their ideas to life. In this post, I’ll share my approach to world-building, using examples from my own projects, and outline five essential rules to guide your creative process. 

For instance, I'm currently exploring the possibility of writing some Dark Fantasy stories about a demon-haunted New York. I know I want to have a speakeasy run by Lucifer, allowing me to use the literal Devil as a barman (and perhaps as the person who listens to my characters when they've had a bad day). I think the two elements - Prohibition in the USA pushing drinking culture underground and the way that it's not just organised crime that uses that for its own purposes - create something that could potentially be quite potent.

I'll use this setting to illustrate the points I make below, so you can see what I mean. 

Before we go any further, I want to stress that everything that I put into a setting is a choice and most of those choices will be conscious ones. There will be evolution, there will be things that just end up in the setting (which I may not even realise until it dawns on me), but mostly creating the setting will be something where my choices are intentional. I highlight this first because it’s important to recognize that world-building offers control, and the choices we make shape the experiences of our readers and players. 

Back to our example, one thing I'm considering is the nature of demons and their influence in this setting. The initial spark for this idea was a vignette about a demonic seamstress making clothes for a debutante ball that would be so uncomfortable they'd make the wearer miserable, which the demon would be able to harvest. I don't know if that's a bit pedestrian, though, so I'm rolling it around in my mind. It's important that I get it right from the beginning, because the nature of the demons' interaction with the world is going to be central to this set of stories. 

With that in mind, I wanted to present my five rules for world building: 

1) Start With An Idea: Don't blunder into building a world unprepared, have an idea of what you want to talk about in your fiction - be it gaming or writing - and develop from there. Admittedly this may be nothing more than wanting to tell some cool stories, which is fine. Some people don't want to deal with subtext and there's no reason to reach for it if it's not your kind of thing. 

My example above was born from what I thought (and still think) is a cool scene, and wanting to build outwards from there. The idea of a New York that's got demon issues is one that seems cool to me, and I fwant to explore it.

2) Explore: Take your idea, hold it up to the metaphorical light and then expand it. By asking questions we learn more about what we're creating and can watch it grow. 

If you're writing a book about an orphan who's actually the heir to a great inheritance then what does that look like? Ask questions to flesh out your world. 

• What's the orphanage like?
• Who are their friends and caretakers?
• Why are they orphaned? 

By asking questions we build the setting and the story we're looking to tell and start to round things out. 

The main thing is to anchor your world in the senses and material things, a world without these won't seem real to your players or readers.

3) Mix and Match: There's no reason to retain historical fidelity in your work if you don't want to. While some choices may be jarring, perhaps you can pull them off. For example, in the Warhammer 40,000 universe you could have a space ship visiting a medieval village and that would be feasible scenario.

For my New York, I obviously want to keep some historical elements - enough to present a city that could reasonably be called New York. At the same time, I can add some nice twists to make it more interesting. Perhaps more people go to church or use some sort of folk magic to ward off evil. Maybe urban myths about strange disappearances are widespread, and everyone knows someone who’s had a peculiar experience. These tweaks enhance the setting and open up storytelling possibilities.

4) Think About Action: You came into this process with an idea, so where does that idea take you? How do you convert it into something which is a living breathing space, and can also change? Stories, ultimately, are about that - which is why so many of them begin with someone arriving or leaving. In much of our modern culture, our stories are often about a status quo being disturbed and the characters doing what they can to restore it. This is particularly true of roleplaying games, where many plots are concerned with somewhere being attacked by monsters but we can find it in Fantasy and Science Fiction TV shows and novels as well. The basic plot of many Fantasy novels revolves around the good King being restored to power, rarely does the concept of a republic rear its head. 

Photo by Vitaliy Shevchenko on Unsplash

For example, in my demon-haunted New York setting, I've imagined three investigators from diverse backgrounds: Mac, an African American war veteran turned private detective; Herschel, a Rabbi and recent immigrant; and Amelia, a debutante challenging societal expectations. These characters reflect the ‘explore’ rule, as their backstories help flesh out the social dynamics and conflicts within the setting.

As you can see, all three come with social commentary built in - which is just something that ends up in my stories and settings. I don't know why, it just does which is what I mean about things that end up in your setting without you really considering it. How will the Police, politicians, and other people react to a Black man, a Jew and a woman investigating strange goings on in Prohibition era New York. 

If the orphan in the example I made in Point 2 is going to have an adventure, what does that look like and how do people react? 

5) Have Fun: This may seem obvious, but it's easy to turn creativity into a drag by insisting we "should" do things and turning it into a chore. If you're not enjoying your creation, take a break, or look at what you can change to make it more fun for yourself. 

I hope this helps with your own creative projects and brings your visions to life, whether you’re building a world for a tabletop RPG, writing a novel, or just creating for fun.

What are you working on? What ideas have sparked your imagination lately? Whether it’s for a game, a story, or something else entirely, let’s share and inspire each other!