How do you do it? I'm writing something that can't be past or present. I suppose it could be Future Earth, an Alternate Earth or maybe not Earth at all. How do you guys come up with settings for your longer SF/Fantasy/other world work? BTW, if this doesn't belong in this section, feel free to delete it. just lookin' for some sort, any sort of help.
Movies, books, my brain, and everything in between. Something like world creation can almost be limitless. Best, Whiskey
Play videogames. Oh, and if you want a post zombie apocolypse feel. I suggest playing fallout 3. Or you can look at pictures of other places. That usualy sters things up for some people. Me, i just think about zombies. The rest comes after.
Take something you like (or hate) and push it to the limit. For instance, I was in Barcelona, and thought that Gaudi's buildings would be ideal for aliens to live in. What if I had an entire city of Gaudi type buildings, and no square corners anywhere? For fantasy, your aliens will often determine the world. If your aliens can fly, you'll need a world based on access from the air, not the ground. If your vampires only eat blood, then breasts become unnecessary.
There are several threads around here on world-building, so you might try finding them with the search function. There are also somegood resources online that you could look at. Personally, settings come to me in many ways. I might find an interesting concept and extrapolate to create a setting where that concept exists ad is used. I might have a story, and build a setting that fits my plot. I might also have a character and try to imagine the world that would create or contain them. Pretty general, I know, but so was your question. If you'd like, I can link you to some good resources.
develop what is different about the society - mindset, customs, ect. then go from there. if the world is vastly different than ours, i'd develop it before the chars or the plot. it's the hardest thing to get right, & easiest to get wrong IMO
I tend to approach building worlds in a very similiar way to the way I build characters - start with what you see, and then ask yourself why, and keep asking yoruself why until the world makes sense. For example... you mentioned fantasy. Start with a fantasy image of the world and the people in it as if someone just handed you a Polaroid of that universe. You see giant mushrooms, a guy with fire instead of hair, and a group of women in green robes, and a person with grayish skin, completely black eyes, and small pointed ears. Now it's time to start asking - Why is is hair like that. Who ... or WHAT is that black eyed being? What is the significance of the green robes? There are no wrong answers, just make stuff up. Hopefully by this point one of your answers has really inspired on you.... zoom in on that answer... ask what, why, and how about the details of your answer. Keep doing this until you feel that your world is complete. Generally speaking, for supernatural fiction I think of the real world as a template, you are god, and now you are making customizations to evolution, society, and the laws of physics. You can do light customizations for stories that exist in a world that is not so different from our own with a few exceptions, or you can do heavy customizations for a high fantasy environment that is so different that perhaps only the fact that matter, people, the existence of emotion, and gravity exist.
