Worldbuilding: [World name]
Build what the story touches. Start with the overview, the magic or technology, and the conflicts, and open the deeper layers when a scene needs them. What a reader must know to follow a scene belongs in that scene, not in a lecture before it.
World overview
World and book | |
The big difference | |
What the story sees | |
Era and technology | |
Tone | |
Viewpoint |
Geography and climate
Travel: days from the story's home base, and how.
Place | Land and climate | Who lives there | Travel |
History
Only events that still cause something today.
When | What happened | What it still causes |
Peoples and cultures
People | Homeland | Values and taboos | What outsiders get wrong |
Magic or technology
What it does:
Who can use it:
Cost:
Limits:
Weakness:
What it has changed:
What people believe about it:
Rules the plot relies on
Show a rule well before the scene it decides.
Rule | Shown in | Tested in |
See an example magic system
What it does: Tide-wardens bind a promise to running water. A bound promise can't be broken while the river flows.
Who can use it: Anyone born within sound of the estuary bells who survives seven years of training; about one in a thousand.
Cost: Each binding takes a memory from the warden, chosen by the water, not by them.
Limits: Nothing binds over still water, and a frozen river frees every oath sworn on it.
Weakness: Dam the stream and the promise lapses.
What it has changed: Contracts are signed on bridges, and every treaty in the north is renewed at the spring thaw.
Rule the plot relies on: No oath holds over ice. Shown in chapter 3, when a skater laughs off a debt; tested in chapter 22, when the river freezes on treaty night.
Power and politics
Who rules:
How they keep power:
Who wants it:
Law and punishment:
Neighbors:
Deeper layers
Open a section when a scene needs it.
Optional: Economy and trade
What the land lives on:
Money, and what a meal, a bed and a journey cost:
Scarce and valuable:
Rich and poor:
Trade routes:
Optional: Religion and belief
Gods or forces:
Institutions:
Practice:
Disputes:
Everyday belief:
Optional: Languages and naming
Culture | Sound | Sample names | Words to keep |
Optional: Daily life
A morning in the home base:
Food and drink:
Calendar and time:
Clothing:
Family and coming of age:
Manners:
Illness and death:
News and travel:
Conflicts
Include a quiet one: a prejudice, a debt, a law nobody enforces.
Conflict | Sides | What each wants | Where the story meets it |
Open questions
Questions a scene raised, contradictions, details invented while drafting.