Nerd for Hire

The term worldbuilding is very familiar to most genre writers, especially those working in sci-fi and fantasy. A basic definition is that it’s the work of creating the reality of your story. Realistic fiction writers do this, too, the great ones often with the same methodical approach and depth as any genre writer. Despite this, worldbuilding isn’t taught as a crucial skill for those working in the real-world.

A lack of worldbuilding isn’t the same thing as leaving your setting vague; a story world can be well-built and non-specific. Worldbuilding doesn’t just answer the “where” of your story, either. It also answers the questions when (time setting), why (historical and cultural context), and how (technology and rules of the world). Strong worldbuilding pulls a reader into the story, creating a three-dimensional space that extends beyond what’s shown on the page. In short, it’s necessary for compelling fiction, regardless of what genre you work in.

 

What Does Worldbuilding Bring to a Realistic Story?

• A sense of place. In a well-built world, readers can picture themselves inhabiting the space along with the characters. A logical, consistent layout of the physical space, combined with intentional sensory details, gives the story this three-dimensional realism.
• A source of conflict and plot movement. When your story world is well-built, your characters don’t just exist in it, they interact with it. This creates organic sources of tension, conflict, and action. Many literary writers struggle with plot, often because they have a misconception that plot means forcing characters into action. The strongest plots are a result of three-dimensional characters navigating a fully-realized world.
• Grounding and context. The best stories linger in your mind after you’ve put them down; you can picture the characters and world existing outside the scenes included in the story. Strong worldbuilding provides this anchor, and establishes the lens through which the reader sees characters and interprets their actions.

Building a Literary World

There are some parts of worldbuilding in a speculative world that realistic fiction writers don’t need to think about. You’re not likely to be writing any languages or coming up with new mythologies, for example, but you might need to look up some existing languages, or study up on a religion you’ve never practiced.

The biggest difference in the worldbuilding process between genres is the ratio of research to invention. This isn’t just a speculative/literary divide, but the genres do tend to fall along a spectrum. On the “mostly research” extreme are historical or biographical fiction, where invention is limited to the small scale—you can use some made-up characters or settings, but the well-known people and landmarks, along with the attire, technology, and culture, need to be accurate to the time and place setting. The “mostly invention” extreme is where you’ll find many space operas and high fantasy works; research into existing cultures, locations, technology, or philosophies often inspires the world, but the author has freedom to alter details or mix-and-match elements of reality with their imagination.

Most literary fiction falls toward the middle of this spectrum. Some details are fixed and best developed through research; others are up to the author to invent. As a rule, any parts of your story that are based in reality, you’ll want to integrate at least some research along with the things you make up. The more familiar your reader is with the realistic aspects of your world, the more important it is to be accurate. A reader won’t balk if you add a fictional house or business, but they’ll definitely take notice if the Eifel Tower is suddenly in New York City. 

Now, I can hear some of you saying “But it’s fiction! I can make the Eifel Tower fly over New York City shooting laser rainbows! THIS IS MY WORLD AND I AM ITS GOD.” And yeah, sure, you can technically do whatever you want. The thing is, when you do something in a story that doesn’t make sense to a reader, it jolts them out of the reality you’re creating and interrupts their flow. They might flip back through to see if they missed something, or read the sentence again to make sure they read it right; even if they keep reading, they’ll be left asking the wrong kind of questions. You want your readers to focus on the characters’ actions and emotions, not wonder how your characters on their way to Woodstock are checking directions on their GPS. 

Inaccuracies and anachronisms can also lead readers astray, making them think it’s a different type of story than it is, then leaving them disappointed and confused when it ends up being a love story and not a time traveling drama. The details you include tell the reader what’s important and how to interpret the themes and motifs. Worldbuilding helps you be more intentional in these decisions.

 

A Note on Research

Research doesn’t always mean Google search and libraries. Facts are a good backbone, but as a fiction writer you want to create an experience that engages all the senses, and that’s not information you’ll find on Wikipedia. Other types of research can include:

• Listening to music from the region or time period
• Preparing or eating a meal typical to the region or time period
• Going to your story’s setting or a similar landscape/setting
• Exploring a place on Google Earth or Google Street View
• Attending a re-enactment, festival, religious service, or cultural event
• Going to a museum or historical society/preserve
• Trying a new activity or experience (e.g. a city-dweller going camping for a story about an outdoorsman)
• Watching travelogues or documentaries
• Attending a class or workshop (e.g. taking a pottery class for a story about a sculptor)
• Talking with an expert or first-hand source (e.g. talking to a nurse about a story set in a hospital)

 

The Pieces Of A Well-Built World

While the methods you use to build your world will be different depending on your project, the necessary components of a well-built world are the same regardless of genre: rules, place, time, language, history, technology, economy, politics, and culture. Let’s look at each through a literary lens.

 

1. Rules

At the macro level, the rules of the world are fixed for realistic fiction. Your characters are bound to concepts like gravity and the laws of physics; when mysterious things happen, readers can rule out magic, ghosts, and aliens as explanations. 

Deviations from this default need to be clarified, at least in the author’s mind. So, for example, if you’re writing in the southern gothic tradition, one of your world rules might be that ghosts are real. Since that deviates from the default, you need to set parameters for how this impacts the characters—who can see them and when, whether they’re linked to objects or free to travel as they please, and so on. This doesn’t need to be stated in the story directly (and in many cases, it’s better when it’s not), but the author should know, and astute readers should be able to infer the details that matter.

Most story worlds have rules on the micro level, too. These often intersect with the world’s politics and culture, and include both the written laws and the unspoken cultural norms that your characters are bound to. Characters should follow these rules for the most part; when they’re broken it should be intentional, and there should be some consequence (or fear of it). This is one easy way worldbuilding can be used to build narrative tension: establish rules, create a protagonist at odds with them, and watch the sparks fly.

Some good questions to ask about your world’s rules:

• Does the story’s reality deviate from accepted reality in any way? If so, how?
• What system of laws is followed in your story’s world? Which laws would your characters feel comfortable breaking?
• What things in your story’s world are considered taboo?
• What sets the standard for moral behavior in your story’s world?

 

2. Place

Worldbuilding isn’t synonymous with setting, but the physical setting of your story is a key component of a well-built world. The setting doesn’t need to be specified, but it does need to be specific. In other words, it’s fine if you don’t want to name the town the story takes place in, but that shouldn’t prevent the reader from picturing themselves walking down its streets. 

Some of the things to define about your world’s physical space:

• Population density. Is it a small town? A large city? An unpopulated wilderness? How much space is there between structures? How many different people would your characters encounter in a typical day?
• Climate. What are the seasons? Does it snow in the winter? Does it rain a lot? How does the climate impact the architecture, infrastructure, and culture of inhabitants?
• Topography. Is it along the coast or inland? Flat or mountainous? What about rivers and lakes? What features of the landscape affect how humans there move and live? When your characters look at the horizon, what do they see?
• Flora and fauna. This will be closely linked to the climate, topography, and population density, but it’s useful to think about separately because plants and animals can provide a lot of sensory detail. It includes domestic animals and cultivated plants, not just wild animals. What non-human life shares your characters’ world?
• Individual living spaces. Do your characters live in houses or apartments? By themselves, or with others? How is their space furnished and decorated? What’s their neighborhood like? What do they see from their window?
• Logistic details. Where do your characters go about day-to-day tasks, and how do they get there? If there are multiple settings in your story, where are they in relation to each other? How developed is the infrastructure of the setting? How accessible are necessities like grocery stores and hospitals for your characters?

 

3. Time

When a story happens is just as important as where it happens for establishing telling details and a sense of place. The time setting of the story impacts what technology the characters use, how they speak and dress, and the cultural norms and touchstones for the characters. 

This doesn’t mean you need to know the exact date of the story’s start and end points. It’s more about placing the story within the right frame of reference. Using major events as time markers can often be more productive for this than specific dates, especially if those events triggered a cultural shift or movement.

Questions to ask as you solidify your story’s time setting:

• Is the story set in the past, present, or future? If the past, how far past? What things that we know, use, or do today would not have existed yet? If in the future, what new knowledge exists that we haven’t yet learned?
• What was the most recent event to significantly influence the politics, economy, or culture of your story’s world?
• What was the most recent event or change that impacted your main character’s life? How much time has passed since?
• How much time passes from the beginning to the end of your story?
• What season is it at the story’s start? Its end?
• Is the story being told in real time, or is the narrator looking back? How much time has passed between the events of the story and the telling?

 

4. Language

This doesn’t just mean identifying what language the characters speak. Language also includes the characters’ accents, dialect, syntax, and word choices. When employed correctly, these make dialogue sound more natural and help make characters into rounded, realistic people. 

Dialogue isn’t the only place word choice matters. Word choices in narration determine the tone, pacing, and rhythm, but they also convey world details like the time period and culture. 

Questions that can help you build the language of your story:

• How formal is the culture or setting of your story? Is it a group of friends? A workplace? A royal court? Each of these environments has its own expectation of formality (even if your characters don’t always choose to follow it).
• What slang terms would be used in this setting or time period?
• What are the characters’ main points of reference and areas of expertise? Would they use any niche terminology in their day-to-day life? What words do your characters likely say more often than most people?
• Do your characters regularly speak languages other than English?
• Are your characters from a region with a distinct accent or speech pattern?

 

5. History

History in a story exists at both the collective and the personal level. You can think of your collective history as your setting’s backstory. It’s the series of events and decisions that made the place what it is. This doesn’t mean you need to fill in every detail. As you’re researching or constructing this history, you can focus on the aspects that are most relevant to the lives of your characters and the underlying themes of your story. 

Personal history includes the events and decisions that shaped the personality, life circumstance, and motivations of your characters. These could be major, world-level events, like a war or natural disaster, but through the lens of its impact on your characters and weighted accordingly. A character losing their father to cancer could have more significance for them than having lived through a tornado, even if the tornado was objectively the larger event.

You can picture collective and personal history as a Venn diagram. They’ll always overlap a bit, but the fewer characters and narrower the scope, the more space these circles will share. If your story has a tight focus on one or two characters, in many cases you can build the world’s history solely from their perspective. This is one of those areas where it’s easy to waste time building your world more than necessary, and while knowing more about your world is never a bad thing, you can save yourself time and effort in the process by identifying how far your focus needs to extend before you start. 

Some questions to solidify your world’s history:

• What events or people from the past would lifelong residents of the setting all know about?
• Has the setting been the way it is for a long time, or has it changed in the recent past? If it’s changed, what’s different now?
• What historical landmarks, buildings, monuments, or ruins are still standing from your setting’s past? How are these interpreted or viewed by current residents?
• What would your characters identify as the most significant moments of their lives? What impact do these moments have on their current motivations, values, or personality?
• How long have the characters known each other, and what were the circumstances of their meeting? How has their relationship evolved during that time?

 

6. Technology

If your story happens in the non-immediate past, establishing what technology is available will help you avoid anachronisms and maintain historical accuracy. Two things to keep in mind with your world’s technology:

1. Just because something is possible in your story world doesn’t always mean it’s logical for the characters to use it regularly. On the other side of this, if a character owns or has access to advanced or specialized equipment, that can quickly show their expertise, knowledge, or niche interest to the reader.

2. Technology doesn’t only include things we would think of as high-tech devices. The broader definition of technology includes any application of scientific knowledge to a practical purpose. There are a lot of inventions we take for granted in the modern developed world that are less widespread or were invented more recently than many realize. Indoor plumbing is the most obvious example—as recently as 1940, only 55% of households had indoor plumbing, and it’s still not a widespread thing in homes in many areas of the world.

Questions to ask about the technology in your story:

• What is the technological era of your story world on the whole? What level of technology is available to the average person?
• What tools, machines, or devices do the characters use on a day-to-day basis?
• How do characters get news and communicate with friends?
• What technology do characters use that’s atypical for their culture or time period? This could be specialized equipment for a job or hobby, or a character who rejects commonly-used technology (e.g. an off-the-grid character in a present-day story).

7. Economy

Everything related to the exchange of goods, services, and currency falls under the heading of economy. On the macro level, this is the overarching economic system the characters live within. At the character level, it includes their socio-economic class and what they do to maintain their livelihood. Questions to hone in on your story’s economy:

• What over-arching economic system does your society operate under (i.e. capitalism, socialism, communism, feudalism, etc.)?
• Is the average person in your setting poor, middle-class, or rich compared to surrounding communities? What about individual characters—what’s their economic status relative to their neighbors?
• Do most of the people in your story work in blue-collar or white-collar professions? Are they workers, managers, or owners?
• How financially secure are your characters? Do they have a savings or live paycheck to paycheck? Do they own or rent the place they live? What’s the most they could afford to spend on a frivolous impulse buy? The most the could cover in an emergency?
• What do your characters do for a living? What’s their average work week like? Do they work a consistent schedule? How many hours?

8. Politics

Politics can mean the system of governance used by a state or nation, but it’s not limited to this big-picture scope. In a broader sense, politics is the activities used by a group of people to make decisions, and the power relationship between individuals in it. This could occur at several levels, depending on the scope of your world and story, including:

• Identity politics. The individual character’s place in the social hierarchy, or the expectations and limitations placed on them because of core aspects of their identity, such as their gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.
• Family politics. The relative status of individuals within a family and their respective roles in the family dynamic, along with the family obligations and expectations, and how they respond to individuals who go against them.
• Workplace politics. The leadership structure and hierarchy within a workplace, and the established rules (written and unwritten) that dictate member behavior and the relative status of individuals to each other. Workplace cliques may also play a role in this.
• Community politics. The same concept as workplace politics, but within a social or community-based group, like a church congregation, fraternity, sports team, neighborhood association, etc.
• State/national politics. This is the type of politics most people think about, involving how official laws and decisions are made. While this exists in the world of any realistic story, it can often be left in the background unless the themes or characters directly engage with political issues.

 

9. Culture

If your story world were a meal, culture would be the spices. It’s what gives a region or community its unique flavor, and that’s true in a fiction context, too. Broadly, culture can be defined as the social behavior and norms of a human group, and how those are manifested in its art, habits, and customs. Aspects of culture to consider:

• Architecture and city planning. What are the communal spaces for this culture? What do the buildings look like and why?
• Religion. This can have a big impact on pretty much every other aspect of the culture, so it’s important to identify early if there is a dominant religion in your story and, if so, how that would manifest in the lives of the characters.
• Heritage. Similar to religion, this is an over-arching cultural touchstone that will influence the rest, and is a good detail to figure out early. Heritage is often based on a community’s ethnic or geographic origins, but doesn’t have to be. What values, traditions, stories, foods, or songs have been passed down over the generations in your community?
• Visual art. What paintings, murals, sculptures, graffiti, or photographs would your characters see most often, and where would they see it? How does the average person in the community decorate their home?
• Music. What snippets of songs would your character hear walking through the streets of your story? What do they listen to when they’re alone? What kind of live music happens in the community, and where is it played? What are the setting’s folk music traditions?
• Literature. This is the broad sense of literature, as in anything that’s written and distributed to an audience. That can include blogs, magazines, and newspapers, along with books and stories. What written materials inform the characters in the story?
• Drama and comedy. What are the popular movies, TV shows, plays, or musicals in the community? How are these things viewed and discussed?
• Clothes. What do your characters wear to work? When they’re hanging out with friends? What about the broader community—do they tend to dress casually or formally? What events or places are people expected to dress up for? Are distinctive articles or styles of clothing worn by certain members of the community?
• Holidays. What days would businesses be closed in the community? When would the biggest celebrations happen? What major dates would characters schedule their lives around?
• Food and drink. What do most people in the community eat on an average day? What’s prepared for feasts or holidays? Does the region have any traditional, typical, or famous dishes? What’s the liquor of choice in local cocktails? When your characters have a night out, what drinks do they order?
• Sports and games. What would community members consider “the home team”? What professional sports are most popular, and how important are they to the community? At the leisure level, what sports or games do your characters play for fun? What types of sports and games are popular in the wider community?
• Etiquette. What words or topics are considered offensive? Do the rules of behavior change depending on the relative age or status of the individual? For example, are children expected to respect their elders, or are there class or caste based rules for how people address each other and interact?

 

Do I Really Need to Think About All That?

Sometimes, yes—but not always. Every project has its own worldbuilding requirements. The extent of worldbuilding you need isn’t completely linked to word count—a flash fiction piece might require just as robust a world as a 7,000-word short story—but as a general rule, the bigger the project, the more time and thought you should put into building the world.

Bigger doesn’t just apply to page length (although novels, as a rule, will need more than short stories). The scope of the story matters, too. An international political drama is going to need a larger, more developed world than a family drama set in a single small town; a story that takes place in a single day has a smaller world than one that spans generations.

Even high fantasy writers don’t go full Tolkien for every story. You only need to build the parts of the world you use. Consider the story’s themes when you’re plotting what worldbuilding you need. If you want to explore class conflict, for example, you’ll want to develop the economic and political aspects of the world; a story about identity likely calls for more emphasis on the world’s culture and history. 

Like most parts of writing, worldbuilding is rarely a one-and-done process. As you write, you may find aspects of the world you built no longer fit and need to be altered. The important thing is that the world stays consistent throughout the entire project, and that you make the necessary edits to ret-con in any changes you make.

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