Hal's guide, tips, and explanation of world building Pt 1, The Basics

A while ago I made a terrible post about world building. It was terrible, both in terms of structure and content, and didn't represent my thoughts or method of worldbuilding, hopefully, this will be better in both terms, and, if not helpful at least entertaining. Anyway, onto the show.

What is worldbuilding?
If you already know what world building is, feel free to skip this. Worldbuilding is the process by which the author creates their setting. Every genre apart from non-fiction does this in some form or another, from minor events that never happened in realistic genres, to creating monsters in paranormal, to making entire new worlds in fantasy, or entire universes in terms of sci-fi and science fantasy. As I'm having trouble defining it fully, I, being the shining beacon of articulation, scholarly research, and professionalism, will steal Wikipedia's explanation. "Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe".

Why should I do worldbuilding?
I don't know. I don't know what you're writing, and the reasons for world building differ from person to person. For a lot of people, me included, it's for fun. Mixing cultures to create something new is something I greatly enjoy. For others it's to provide a solid catalogue of references and cultural identities for their characters and as a means of generating conflict, as well as keeping everything consistent. For other they just do it on the fly, making it up as the go along. It's something I recommend any aspiring fantasy or sci-fi author try, both to see if they enjoy it and to see if helps keep internal consistency.

How do I start worldbuilding?
Once again, I don't know how you should start. There's no defined start point for creating your own fictional reality, some people start with an overarching idea of either an event, culture, species, place or organisation to start things off with. My best recommendation is to start with an idea of what you want your world to be. High fantasy, low fantasy, gritty sci-fi or a more optimistic take, it's a good idea to understand what tone you're going for. A world full of fantastic adventure probably should probably have less moral grey than dark fantasy, though mixing and matching can create some interesting takes.

Anyway, I'll do another post either latter this week or next week