Worldbuilding while not being an autistic sperg

[Lifeguard Hermit]

Here's a few things I'd like to share.

• Make sure the world has its own internal consistent rules. It needs to make sense in its own context.
• The small things add up! Small things like customs, food, etc. Whether they're human or not, the people in your world should have their own version of daily life.
• Mention things in passing. If something in your world is important to the story, then elaborate on it! Don't forget you're writing a story, not an encyclopedia.
• Related to the above point: Don't forget to add current events and history to your world. These build more context and meaning for your imaginary world.
• Build it a little bit at a time. You probably have a lot of cool ideas, but it's also not possible to share them all at once in a single story.

I'm doing worldbuilding of my own because I have my own projects I'm working on. Hopefully I can get them published this year at the earliest. Best of luck to you though and I hope your project works out!

This and what @Judge Holden and @wtfNeedSignUp said: catering to your audience, even if its just you, goes soo far.
I recently stumbled on a smol mod I made for EV Nova when I was like 12-14 and it took me a minute to realize that it wasnt stock game text I was reading as it directly mentioned a player char of mine for decades ago.

I cant post the planet's desc. bc it has a major powerlevel but heres the planet's bar's desc:

The singing and merriment never cease in this pub: it's almost as if every joy and laugh is suspended in time. The ale is thick, the girls are plentiful, and there is always a fight to be had. The far wall is home to several murals of the Wild Geese and a large holoscreen plays back highlights of their successful campaigns. A huge wormwood carving on the wall above the bar glistens with golden plaques listing the name of every Goose to have fallen in battle: New Ireland herself honored in the largest of them all.

If you respect the source material's vision it really helps as well.

 

[Merried Senior Comic]

I've written a good amount of lore for a galaxy that has FTL travel but 1940s technology and culture but I'd never share it with anyone.

 

[Haffhart]

The title of this thread is a contradiction in terms.

 

[SummonerofLain]

With some creativity, bending the fictional world rules can be done well if executed carefully and not going into lolcow levels of absurdity.

Respecting source material isnt that hard. Its just that most media is completely weaponized these days as disposable propaganda and clout seeking while censoring and banning everything else. nothing more.

No idea how to publish my own stuff but ive had some projects done for a while now.

 

[Krystal]

You can probably get away with making a giant continent or country that has as many different biomes as possible. (fields, deserts, oceans/beaches, forests, etc.). And then depending on whether you want it to have a certain tone, have everything reflect that. Here are two examples that really reflect the tone in two completely opposite ends.

vs.

These have completely different tones in their stories/lore and have it reflected into the world made. Superstar Saga was very much goofy while Thousand Year Door was more serious and dark. It all really depends on what tone you want and build from there.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Just ranting my dumb thoughts here.

I've never made it further than the conceptual stage, no actual drafting. I'm (overly) careful not to lift ideas directly from other works, I try to only allow myself to be influenced by the general themes and ideas, not structural or narrative concepts. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll end up with that same Frankenstein problem.

Theoretically the solution is to write something both good and wholly new, but literature has existed forever, so that's nearly impossible. I think a good middle ground is taking more heavy influences from obscure, older works and reinventing them.

It's harder to get anything that feels original going when you are constrained by genre conventions. I like westerns for example, but there's only so much you can do without modifying it. Like Steamworld Dig, they mixed western themes with steampunk/sci-fi elements to create something original. Good games too, but they don't feel "pure", like they're cheating. Is it possible to have a fresh story in the western genre? How many ways can you spin cowboys before you inevitably have to add something else into it and end up with Cowboys VS Aliens?

This is what I struggle with, and seemingly every writer does. RDR got a pass for being a generic cowboy story because it was the first video game to do it so well. If it had been just a movie then it'd not have been as well received, I think.

I think some genres are easier than others. Where western, noir, and war are pretty much dry wells as far as I can tell, there's no end to less grounded genres such as sci-fi, horror, and high fantasy. I'm just less interested in those, personally.

Then again, I guess there's nothing wrong with wearing your inspirations on your sleeve, and heavily mixing genres. Dragon Ball is my favorite series and started out with blatant Journey West inspirations before shifting focus to martial arts and then leaning heavily into sci-fi. Maybe you can just cherry pick shit and stitch it together, you just need to be good at it.

I wonder what people think about refining stories. Take something and fix it. Dragon Ball is my favorite series but it's heavily flawed. Would it be bad writing to basically lift DB, and fix its problems? There's so many issues that just fixing them alone would yield a significantly different story in the long run.

Can always work with settings, like historical settings, that are underused. Detective novels about mobsters in Prohibition Chicago are probably dime-a-dozen, but what about Triads in Warlord Era Shanghai? Sword and sandal epics in Classical Greece and Rome are common, but what about Classical Mesoamerica? Roaming gunslingers in the American West are tired, but what about roaming Cossacks on the Siberian frontier?

Etc.

(Rockstar's cancelled game Whore of the Orient would have been set in Warlord Era Shanghai, Gary Jenning's Aztec is a book set in pre-Colombian Exchange Mexico, and Russian films called "Osterns" are their equivalent of our Westerns.)

 

[madethistocomment]

You can probably get away with making a giant continent or country that has as many different biomes as possible. (fields, deserts, oceans/beaches, forests, etc.).

I'm pretty sure both of the Americas and definitely Asia are great real life examples of a continent having very nearly every climate zone out there.

Even the very small Hawaiian islands have 10 of Earth's 14 climate zones. I don't think a setting having a ton of different biomes and climates is all that unrealistic, to be honest.

 

[Eurasian Lynx]

I just think up cool shit, shove it on there and retroactivrly come up with a justification.

 

[augment]

A surefire way of writing forgettable, trite milquetoast fiction that I'll drop and never bother to finish is to indulge in world-building on any scale. Fucking, James Joyce couldn't huff enough of his own farts in Ulysses, and you think your retelling of the babylonians but in space and with fox-faced yetis is going to grab my attention?

 

[Corydoras]

A surefire way of writing forgettable, trite milquetoast fiction that I'll drop and never bother to finish is to indulge in world-building on any scale. Fucking, James Joyce couldn't huff enough of his own farts in Ulysses, and you think your retelling of the babylonians but in space and with fox-faced yetis is going to grab my attention?

This is the truth. 'Worldbuilding' is a trap and it distracts you from doing the real work of actually writing.

 

[The Husbando Collector]

World-building is one of those things that seem simple at first, but it's in actuality a really tough balancing act as there are different factors that play into it. However, some good guidelines to follow to make sure it doesn't become a mess is this:

1: is this world more a soft or hard-based magic system (I'm including sci-fi in here too. Anything that is deemed magnificent or otherworldly counts)?

1a: Establish the rules of this system: what is the use and consequences of the system? What can it do and what can't it do? What are the tools used to enable users to perform this act?

2: if this has supernatural creatures in it, how do they interact with the human population? Are they in hiding or are they accepted by large by society? How do the species interact and where do they find conflict between each other?

3: where does the story take place? Country/culture? and what time period it takes place or is inspired by? Don't be afraid to look at historical texts to help you with this to get a better understanding of whatever time period and culture you are taking it from to understand the general sentiments towards things like women's rights/gay rights/religious tolerance/outsiders of that culture etc...

4: What events took place before the events of the story that make the world it is? How did that event(s) influence the societal structures of the MAIN locations of that world?

There's probably more to this, but these are the basic guidelines. World-building can be good and all, but it shouldn't be the main focus of the story. You can create the most in-depth and amazing lore to your story, but the main plot and characters always comes first.

 

[BroccoliBrain]

I say it really depends on what your worldbuilding is for, or what medium it will be the stage for, and that's why the answers itt vary so much. If you want to worldbuild for its own sake, that is perfectly acceptable and you can be as autistic as you want. If it's for a story, only build as much as you need as, like some people here already pointed out, it's far too easy to become bogged down by details your audience won't enjoy or never write anything because you're too busy brainstorming, all at the cost of the story you're trying to tell. But again, in my opinion you can ignore those warnings if this isn't for writing a narrative like a novel. Just saying because everyone has assumed OP is doing this to write a story when you haven't specified that.

If its for a game, like a tabletop or an RPG you could probably afford more room for those details because non DM players are going to interact with it as if it were real and they generally appreciate this hobby too.

I forgot where I read this from but you can approach building your world from top-down or bottom-up which sorta means the scale you choose to focus on first; maybe you're the kind of person who finds it easier to make up all the minute details of the culture of a local city, like the cuisine they have just because you had an inspiring meal one day or maybe you prefer doing the big bits, the cosmology, and you want to draft up some gods before figuring out what sort of country that would come from it.

Personally I've kept a notebook with me to write down any stray ideas then would revisit them later but I also had to push myself to really create in order to transform those ideas into concrete structures. Then I'd write it down properly in Obsidian (it's a note app that allows linking, like a wiki, autistic right?) and be mindful to keep an impartial tone like an actual wiki or otherwise leave an author's note for myself. That world was supposed to be for a story but it will never be published or anything like that, it's always been a (very personal) hobby to me so I'm very okay if it loses focus. What's most important if it isn't your job is that it should be fun.

 

[augment]

 

[Haramburger]

Every thread on kiwifarms there will be at least one poster that's like

HAHA. WHAT NOW RALPH

going to build a world with less gunts, and with more fathers cockblocking them from barely-legal teens

HAHA WHAT NOW RALPH????

 

[maguyver16]

What is your guys opinion on made up languages being put on buildings and as text in the setting of a fantasy story?

keep in mind im not saying that the made up language is what is being spoken throughout the movie/game/etc., simply that the words on signs and screens don't read in English or any kind of Earth language.

 

[soy_king]

One thing that I think people don't factor in is proper geography. not just realistic looking landmass, but also tectonic plates, current systems affecting climates, which subsequently affect cultures and geopolitics. I have yet to see a single series with realistic geography.

I probably also mentioned this earlier, but one of my biggest bugbears is a medieval fantasy world with everyone speaking the same language or bring able to travel hundreds of miles and being mutually intelligible with the vast majority of people in that location. in reality, even moving twenty miles from your home town would result in you being in a place with a vastly different dialect from your own. One acceptable workaround is if there's either a pidgin or lingua franca used by certain elites or mercantile classes as a way of communicating with foreigners, but you'd still be limiting your communications with select groups of people.

 

[Mega Black]

The advice I got that always resonated with me is that your worldbuilding is mostly smoke and mirrors. If you plan on making a book with an actual story and characters to follow, fleshing out every individual aspect of your world is going to be more a hindrance to your productivity than a help. At the end of the day, brainstorming is easy, writing is hard.

Create concepts, cultures, and other elements that strengthen the narrative and imply a fleshed out world without worrying too much if it all slots together perfectly in the back end. A sense of mystery and openness leaves more of an impact on the readers than a full bible of autistic detail.

 

[Some Badger]

I probably also mentioned this earlier, but one of my biggest bugbears is a medieval fantasy world with everyone speaking the same language or bring able to travel hundreds of miles and being mutually intelligible with the vast majority of people in that location. in reality, even moving twenty miles from your home town would result in you being in a place with a vastly different dialect from your own. One acceptable workaround is if there's either a pidgin or lingua franca used by certain elites or mercantile classes as a way of communicating with foreigners, but you'd still be limiting your communications with select groups of people.

My workaround for this thing in one of my stories that the the nth dimensional angel thing following the protagonist around as he crosses two whole continents is that said angel thing grants him and his party the power of understanding and speaking a language in order to fulfill his quest. It doesn't stop them from conflicting culturally or make their work any easier beyond the surface level. The protagonist also doesn't learn about this it until it's revealed close to the end of the plot. The catch is that the buff (for lack of a better term) fades if the party strays too far from the protagonist (about 20 miles at any given time).

There is actually a lingua franca thanks to Not Rome occupying the southern half of the entire continent before imploding on itself 500 years ago but just like in real history, it's been limited to the clergy and nobility. It's not particularly helpful to a band of illiterate human outcasts and semi-literate nonhuman noble outcasts.

What is your guys opinion on made up languages being put on buildings and as text in the setting of a fantasy story?
Ver archivo adjunto 3341380
keep in mind im not saying that the made up language is what is being spoken throughout the movie/game/etc., simply that the words on signs and screens don't read in English or any kind of Earth language.

I liked the idea, then the Pokemon games started doing it around Gen 7 and now I hate it. Call me autistic, but it's really immersion breaking sometimes. I think Attack on Titan did it halfway through the series too for God knows what reason.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

World-building is one of those things that seem simple at first, but it's in actuality a really tough balancing act as there are different factors that play into it. However, some good guidelines to follow to make sure it doesn't become a mess is this:

1: is this world more a soft or hard-based magic system (I'm including sci-fi in here too. Anything that is deemed magnificent or otherworldly counts)?

1a: Establish the rules of this system: what is the use and consequences of the system? What can it do and what can't it do? What are the tools used to enable users to perform this act?

2: if this has supernatural creatures in it, how do they interact with the human population? Are they in hiding or are they accepted by large by society? How do the species interact and where do they find conflict between each other?

3: where does the story take place? Country/culture? and what time period it takes place or is inspired by? Don't be afraid to look at historical texts to help you with this to get a better understanding of whatever time period and culture you are taking it from to understand the general sentiments towards things like women's rights/gay rights/religious tolerance/outsiders of that culture etc...

4: What events took place before the events of the story that make the world it is? How did that event(s) influence the societal structures of the MAIN locations of that world?

There's probably more to this, but these are the basic guidelines. World-building can be good and all, but it shouldn't be the main focus of the story. You can create the most in-depth and amazing lore to your story, but the main plot and characters always comes first.

I definitely agree that world-building is important, but it shouldn't be the focus of the story. The plot and characters should always come first. I think following some guidelines can help make sure the world-building doesn't become a mess, as you said. Establishing the rules of any magic system (or sci-fi element) is crucial in order to maintain credibility throughout the story. If there are supernatural creatures involved, their interactions with humans should be well thought out and believable. It's also important to consider where the story takes place - both geographically and historically - in order to create a believable setting. And finally, understanding what events took place before the story begins can help flesh out why things are they way they are in this fictional world.

 

[The Husbando Collector]

I definitely agree that world-building is important, but it shouldn't be the focus of the story. The plot and characters should always come first. I think following some guidelines can help make sure the world-building doesn't become a mess, as you said. Establishing the rules of any magic system (or sci-fi element) is crucial in order to maintain credibility throughout the story. If there are supernatural creatures involved, their interactions with humans should be well thought out and believable. It's also important to consider where the story takes place - both geographically and historically - in order to create a believable setting. And finally, understanding what events took place before the story begins can help flesh out why things are they way they are in this fictional world.

The thing about worldbuilding is to know what is actually important to the story or characters and what isn't. So for example, if certain witches can use a specific type of magic that is highly dependent on their environment and your character is that witch, it could lead to interesting fight scenes and gives an insight to how this world works. Like a witch from the desert's magic is highly reliant on sand and arid environments so if they're in the tundra, they have to learn how to survive in a much different way than they know which can raise tension because their magic is far less powerful. Whereas going into the fucking bread economy in the 1500's in your world doesn't mean fuck all if it's just a tidbit and doesn't explain how the world came to be or how it affects the plot or characters in any meaningful way. (yes, this is an actual example from a published book and it's just as retarded as it sounds).

TL;DR: good world building is know what is actually relevant to the story or characters.