Consider This BEFORE Starting Your World-Building Process

The world-building process can be some of the most exciting and interesting parts of your planning phase, but it can also get overwhelming quite quickly. There are so many things you can consider:

Do you want to add magical creatures? Maybe you want to create your own magical creatures to make your story more unique?

How can you create a unique and engaging magical system for your world? Maybe you want to add realistic history? Maybe you have to come up with your own fantasy cultures?

With so many options to think about how do you know when to stop? Yes, you do want a well-thought-out world that makes sense to your readers, and you need some details for this, but when are you doing too much world-building?

This post is here to help you think about your world-building process before you start, so that you will not get into these problems later on. Let’s start:

What do You Need?

I know that there is some advice out there that claims your world-building process is not complete until you know every single little aspect of how your world functions, but I am not a big fan of this statement. While there are some things that you should definitely know, there are also others that can be irrelevant, depending on what you want to focus on in your story. I’ll give you an example:

If I am writing a fantasy story about kingdoms going to war with each other, I will most definitely have to know about the history of these kingdoms. While it is always good to have a rough idea of the historical events of your world and how they shaped the current countries and their dynamic/ relationship with each other, I will have to get into even more detail if I am writing about battles and war. Why? Because war is a huge thing, and most people don’t go into war without any good reason.

So what would you have to think about if a huge part of your story revolved around this topic? You should get a clear and detailed overview of which kingdoms or countries have interacted in which way with each other in the past. Are they now allies? Why? Is this alliance new, or has it already existed for a long time? Is there hatred between different kingdoms and their people because of past events? How is history used to convince people that the government’s action of declaring war is reasonable, or maybe even necessary?

As you can see, these more detailed questions wouldn’t be necessary if the focus of your story is not on political themes. In this case, it would be enough to know a few key events, but you wouldn’t need to understand the whole process that led your kingdoms to where they are today. You could still work on it if you wanted to, but it is not needed to explain the plot or make your characters’ actions believable.

If you are considering writing a story in which you feel you need a good understanding of your world’s history, check out my post about how to establish realistic history for your fantasy world.

So think about what aspects of world-building are truly important to your story and to your plot. Go into detail on these aspects. For other aspects that do not seem that important to your story, it is enough to have a rough overview.

What are You Interested in?

Another thing you should consider is what you are interested in. I, for example, am really interested in history. Thinking about how history can shape my fantasy world, its cultures, and the relationships between different realms is one of my favorite things to do! I love to think about how history is studied in my world, how people find out about historical events, if there are multiple versions of the same event, if people interpret events differently, if it is used to manipulate people, and so much more.

But not everyone enjoys planning these things and writing about them, and that is okay! However, I do truly believe that the reader can tell whether you were excited about these parts of your world-building process or not. So think about what you would like to explore in your world and use this interest to go into more detail for your world-building.

Maybe you enjoy linguistics and languages. Then explore different languages in your fantasy world, how they are related to each other, how they might influence the way your different nations see the world, etc. Create different languages, different accents, and different dialects.

Maybe you enjoy art, such as music and paintings. Then explore how these things might differ in your world depending on the regions or nations.

There are so many things you can create in your world, but I can guarantee you that it will be noticeable if you like this part of the process or not. So think about what interests you and add it to your world-building.

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World-building can be a really fun experience, but you can also quickly lose yourself in creating all of the different aspects of a world, so I hope this short blog post helped you get an understanding of what you could think about before starting your world-building process. Have fun, and happy writing! Follow me on Pinterest for more writing advice, or check out my Benable lists for writing resource recommendations!

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