The Art of World Building

    When I say world building, most people think about the setting of each individual scene. Are they in a castle? Are they in the forest? What do those places look, feel, and smell like? But that is only the beginning.  

Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings. The Hunger Games. Game of Thrones.

    These are all stories where the world building is done masterfully. You have race, you have politics, you have social class, you have history embedded into all these stories. Your goal should be to do the same. Now, I'm not saying that you're story has to have all of these themes discussed, but you should know them in the back of your head. These are the social settings that impact the way your character might think about the world, interact with others, and live their life.

    Thinking about all these aspects can be daunting, so lets take a step back. Worldbuilding is one of the most important steps in writing your book, so lets break it down into five simple steps.

1) The Physical Features

    The first thing you should do is consider what physical location your stories' events are occurring in. Is it in a big city in the US? Is it in a small town? Are you stranded on an island, surrounded by nature? Are you in a fantasy kingdom nobody's ever heard of before? Describe it in as much detail as you can. Make a Pinterest board about it. You should know the landscape as well as you know the back of your own hand.

2) Who's In Charge

    After you've determined the physical location of your story, you have to figure out who's running the place. Is it a cruel King that treats his subjects poorly? Is it a kind old lady that the people look up to? How does this person impact your character? How does your character feel about this person? Or maybe they are the person in charge. Whoever it is that runs things is going to impact every other aspect of your fictional society. This is the political aspect of your story.

3) Social Classes

    Determining the social class of your character might be one of the most important parts of your story. Social class determines how they grew up, and that will determine who they are as a person. Other classes might impact your character as well. How do they interact with classes higher than them? Lower than them. This goes back to whoever your leader is, because if they're a bad leader, social classes might be in disarray, which might cause tension in your story. 

4) History

    What happened in your story before your story started? This will heavily impact your character and how they may behave. History can be as simple as a broken household, or it can be as complex as a world war. This also goes back to your outline and constructing a timeline. Whatever happened in the past will reflect on the present, and may even determine the course of the future. 

5) Change

    When world building, you also have to consider to ways the world might change as the story progresses. If they're traveling, you have to consider how the different environments might effect them. As you get further into your story, you must consider the four previously mentioned aspects of worldbuilding and determine how things might be different based on what's happening. 

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    Worldbuilding will be as difficult as you decide to make it; however, the more effort you put into it the more complex your story will be. 

    Also, when I say world building, I don't mean you're constructing an entire country. It can be as simple as considering the setting of a high school: what does that school look like, who is the popular kid, what are the principal and teachers like, what kind of cliques are there, what are the schools legends, myths, and superstitions, how is the school structure changing as your character gets older. The size of the world your building depends on the size of the story you're writing.

    For my current story, I'm building a college community around my character. Her major impacts her classes, her familial ties determines some of her connections, the people she hangs out with determine her social status. In this instance, I'm not constructing a very large community, but unless I flesh out this environment my story will be lacking.

    The final thing I'd like to touch on in today's post is the way you implement world building into your story. Nobody wants to read twelve pages worth of info-dumping. That's how you quickly lose your readers. Instead, you want to introduce aspects naturally as they come up in the story. If a specific event occurs, you can describe a bit of the background that led to or directly impacted that event. If your character is being called to war for the second time in their life, you can briefly reflect on their past experience in the military. 

    The way you introduce your world should be relevant to what is happening to your character in that moment. The goal is to give your reader an "aha" moment as to why things are the way they are. Slow and steady wins the race.

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