So, most of my stories end up being in an alternate earth, or something. But I have a story that I need to really worldbuild. Hence, I am looking for some tips regarding how to start. I have the concepts, the characters, but I need to figure out more about their society. Do you have any worldbuilding checklists or questionnaires? It's also partially fanfic, but NOT, because the original work is public domain. (And NOT Holmes. It's the world of Oz, but from the actual books. Not the movies. Get those red shoes out of here, we only want silver!) I am building a whole new Oz/Land of Ev AU world and I need help figuring out where to start. Thanks!
Worldbuilding can be hard. When I first started on my universe it was a skeleton, now there is a bit more meat to it, but I don't think it will ever be complete. Wordbuilding is like a puzzle, some pieces won't fit together, you have to be wary of where you might break the puzzle if you introduce new pieces. One advice would then be to realize that worldbuilding is an ever on-going project and it is not meant to be absolutely complete, just enough to carry the story, otherwise you might get stuck in worldbuilding only. You could experiment a little, write up your characters in a setting of your world. Just start writing and see what kind of things are introduced and go from there. Here is just one way of many to get started: If you have magic, perhaps lay out the rules for that magic. How does it affect the world and the characters? Move on to the landscapes and settings, what colors are the trees? How much do you copy from our world? Then go for the culture, how does it look? What clothes do people wear? How does their houses look? How are certain places different from each other? Politics? Relationships, how do they work in your world? How do they interact with the culture? History of your world, how has it shaped the present, how may it shape the future? There is much to worldbuilding, but I hope this might help you get some ideas.
Thank you so much for all of these suggestions. The thing is, I know the landscape and the magic. What I am struggling with is culture. So holidays, home designs, etc and clothing. I know a decent amount about the politics and I will work on the history. (Which, I am using mostly the canon history of Oz and its surrounding countries. Are there any questionnaires designed to help with culture?
When I started on my latest fantasy novel I tried to avoid the worldbuilding dump and just jotted down the basics until ran into problems in my story. You can NEVER plan all your worldbuilding in advance, you will always run into revisions and things you need to clarify, or your story will point out illogical rules. I did mine in this order... 1- Named my main characters and chose their homeland and ethnicity 2- Detailed relevant cities, towns, and scenery, then how they're laid out on my continent 3- I did a quick map, then detailed their climate and flora 4- I connected all my cities to the map, and specified the different races and sub-races that live in each 5- I specified the races relevant the continent I built and their physical and cultural attributes. Not sure what scale you're planning to build on but in total I customized a continent with 9 regions, 5 races, a total of 12 ethnicities (three kinds of elves, two lycan-like, two orc-like, four different human cultures, and the last of the satyr-like peoples.) I have 6 capital cities and about 2 or 3 dozen landmark cities, towns, temples, forts and towers. I wouldn't go all out creating whole planets, galaxies, etc. or mapping the entire world when your story will only be set in part of it. Not everyone needs to Tolkien their way around worldbuilding. Just have fun, get your basics down and your story should reveal any holes or missing info.
If you can do it through subtle things like culture, scenery, and overall atmosphere. Let the setting and character interactions do the heavy lifting for most of it, to avoid going overboard with lengthy descriptions of things, unless they are important to the story, and then only describe them once in enough detail that the reader can imagine what the element(s) are/is without feeling like the story has stopped to look around. Not simple, but it is workable with practice.
Here is a very recently created link on a website dedicated to novel writing, which focuses on worldbuilding. I ran across this the other day, searching to help a friend of mine—not a member of the forum—who is also worldbuilding. It might prove useful, although there are a few other items not mentioned here that I would include, if I were worldbuilding ...like actual buildings (exterior and interiors) and other structures, etc. But I think it's a worthwhile list, with explanation. And it's free. https://self-publishingschool.com/worldbuilding/#
There's two main ways of worldbuilding, should try and find your preference and look for specific advice. 1. Inwards-out; starting small and slowly growing the world around your writing. EG, your novel starts in a tavern so you decide what the tavern's about, the village in which it is, etc. Then whenever you need something new, you add it and build a bit around it. Create a world that facilitates a story. 2. Outwards-in; starting with the world and defining continents, lands, cultures, etc. before even jumping into writing, crafting a world from top-to-bottom. Create a story for your world.
If you're looking for realistic worldbuilding, I'd start by thinking of what objects come into play in your story. What possessions do the characters have, what kind of dwellings do they live in, etc? Then think of how they were made and where the materials came from. For example. If your story plays out in a primitive, tribal society who live in a wilderness, they may be living in tents made from wood poles and animal skins. That wilderness must then have trees and animals in it- to provide the materials for the tents. If they have metal tools, there needs to be a blacksmith. The idea is to create a world where everything fits together into a coherent whole.
I tend to lean towards the first option, myself. I don't worldbuild, in the sense that I write historically-set, character-based fiction which takes place in the real world. I do have a basic overall view of the time/era/location that I'm going to be writing in. Then I come up with characters, plop them into a situation, and get going. When I need to know a fact, I research it. And keep writing till I need to know something else...rinse, repeat. I don't actually need to know everything about the world my characters live in. Only enough to make the story plausible (and in my case, realistic.) But nobody will know or need to know everything about a world—fantasy or otherwise—contained in a novel. The world is just the setting, really. It's the characters and what they do that will grab the reader. I worry that if I simply started researching 'my' chosen era and location, I'd end up being a historian, rather than a fiction writer. Of course writers can be both, but the tendency to get immersed in all the minutiae of the world itself can obscure the 'story' you want to tell about your characters. I've lost count of the number of people on this forum alone who can't seem to break free from their worldbuilding, or can't find a story they want to tell inside the world they've built. The good thing about fantasy is that if you discover an anomaly in your world order later on, you can go back and make whatever changes you need to make. Yes, the events have to hang together, but you do have a lot of leeway when you're creating them.
