MODULE 1
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Principles of world-building
3 tenets of world-building
3 things to avoid during world-building
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BUILDING YOUR SETTING IS NOT THE FIRST STEP TO WRITING A STORY.
Developing your fictional world is. Consider it a point of entry to your own story since
it provides both your characters and your researched facts somewhere real to exist.
IT IS NOT A DELIBERATE DISTORTION OF FACTS OR HISTORY.
Since fiction is mostly the work of imagination, narratives never claim their sequence
of events to be true. It is merely the author’s interpretation. This step lets you revisit a
certain phase of history and recontextualize certain elements that make sense in a
logical manner.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE THE GENRE OF YOUR STORY IN THE BEGINNING.
Let your world-building process determine it. Once you have the laws and rules of your
world in place, it will help determine the tone of your world and thereby, your genre.
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there is none.
E. SCHWAB
MARGARET
ATWOOD
-She loved to write about outsiders.
-But in order to do that, she had to establish
the relationship between the insiders and
the outsiders.
- Her world-building process in The Handmaid's
Tale began by thinking how characters
from that period of time ate
breakfast.
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E. Schwab's world-building process requires her to work with specific casestudy questions (5-10). Rather than searching multiple sources, her
questions per topic are limited but very specific. This is the Pantser's
research method in terms of world-building.
Atwood's world-building process, on the other hand, begins with a
personal point of interest. It is not specific. This method requires a
wandering mind and in this case, the author hopes to chance upon
important information. While extra information is acquired through this
process, s/he hopes to utilize it later. This is the Plotter's research method.
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3 tenets of
world-building
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3 TENETS
Your characters are products of your world.
They are consequences of the events in your
fictional realm. Before creating a character,
think of the statuses of races corresponding
to the events, and then place your character
in that particular category.
The locations of your world must be engaging
and memorable. They could be made
important to certain characters through
personal experience or significant memories.
Adding past events to each location adds
depth to the world and makes the reader feel
as if real people existed in your world.
You can coin new words to be used in your
world, but you need to ensure your reader
must understand and remember them till the
end of your story. You may combine existing
words through puns. You may repeatedly use
them throughout the story. And most
importantly, you must keep them simple. They
should not sound like emissions from a
gargling throat.
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3 THINGS TO AVOID
DURING
WORLD-BUILDING
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Introduction of random elements
If you wish to introduce new elements to your world, you must add it as a particular event
that has certain consequences for your world. You must establish the cause-effect
relationship, i.e. if this certain event has happened now of all times, you must explain why.
The founding philosophy
In essential, the founding philosophy of your world is a set of rules and laws that your characters
ought to obey. Breaking these rules means rupturing the design of your world, and that is
something you must avoid at all costs.
Theme of your story
The theme is the personal message you wish to convey to the world through your story. It will only
unravel itself towards the end, during the final moment of catharsis. Until you have reached the
end, you won’t know what your story is actually about.
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