We, as writers, gods of our own creations, scorch details of our stories into the very pages we touch. Societies, classes, species, animals, culture, politics, history, groups and factions, resources and economies are all part of the worlds we create, and as ink soaks into refurbished trees meant to record the odysseys of our own creations, the enigma of our minds becomes lucid. We, as writers, have the complex task of building worlds into sheets of paper, but how can we even begin to structure what only our minds can see?
While there are many ways for you to go about world building, one of my favorite ways to start any story is to pick an aesthetic. The options are endless when it comes to novels, and most aesthetics can be applied to many different genres. For example, fantasy is my favorite genre to write, but the type of story I am writing can change drastically depending on the tone I want to create. Take a dark and disturbing story where danger lurks around every corner. Many aesthetics can be chosen for this type of work depending on what you want to focus on. Emphasizing politics and a realistic story could mean that you have a more royal and noble aesthetic for example. Look at what these types of aesthetics tend to have in common across other stories. For example, perhaps you set your story in a city with a high society, where kings, queens, and dukes conspire to backstab each other. This might lead you to develop important characters and factions, or lead you to describe intergenerational families, and this, in turn, might lead you to write about class issues, distribution of resources, or power dynamics each of these families have to do to gain power, and why they are still in power.? These questions might lead you to think about our locations in your world. Is there trade? Do resources come from the land, or the city itself, or are there other places to acquire resources. All of these questions give your world-building depth.
Perhaps you want more of a mystical tone. Start with species. Do you want fairies and fay, or perhaps something darker such as vampires and werewolves? In what time period do you want your story to be set? How do you want your factions to be set up? Are there any important historical events that have shaped your world? For example, perhaps your story is set in modern day, but werewolves and vampires have been at war since the medieval ages. What do locations look like for these groups? Are there humans they both encounter? Are these creatures in hiding or do they control your world? Do they interrupt each other’s economies? How did these species come to exist? Do their societies have different cultures? Do they use magic in their everyday societies? Is magic forbidden?
As we make our way through these questions, notice where we started; a simple aesthetic. Noble and royal, and dark fantasy. From there we branched into questions about how our world works, as we explore the essence of this aesthetic. High society with a story set in realism vs mystical creatures with a story set in dark tones force us to think about why our stories fit into these aesthetics. The path to world building is difficult and needs to be thorough, but as the ink of our Odysseys dries into the pages of a book, we can see the fruits of our labor come to life through these questions and aesthetics.