Of Building Living Worlds

Building a world is the most fun part of writing fiction for me. You’re figuring things out in a place that can’t exist with the laws of physics and science in our own world.

A place where miracles might be the most common thing in the universe, where the word might mean little at all.

There’re so many questions to ask.

How Does Technology Affect Culture?

What does the culture on the eastern continent look like? How do they style their hair and clothing? What is their technology level?

Which characters have an accent or dialect based upon each location?

Is the climate more temperate, or is it snowing all year round?

The people in your world might have hexagons in their irises, or they might not have to eat at all because an alternative source of biological energy was discovered in the year ED 4503 (Example Date).

An Example from the Orchestrylus Odyssey

In my Orchestrylus Odyssey series, different spheres have various levels of advancement, but all seven spheres use auroral nodes to power their cities and smaller areas. Each place has an auroral node, each with a name based upon the climate or a certain feature. In The Lost Ships of Lim Wierre, the auroral node on Broken Scale Island sticks out of an extinct volcano, while the Changing Keys Port builds upward as the cliff face escalates, with higher buildings needing less power draw because of proximity, changing the billing to far fewer tunes (the money system) than the lower structures. Meaning higher-class people pay less, which you can guess leads to classism and wars between those born into a higher status and the common people.

Even tiny details such as this can lead to conflict and escalate tension.

On the sphere of Haydnus, modern fashion takes center stage, with clothing resembling our 21st century, even if most of the world isn’t as grounded about fashion.

Some spheres have aurora scrapers (instead of skyscrapers) and other spheres have chordel cottages with high-tech nodules that tie into the auroral grid system.

Other spheres might be made up of stretched-out continents with more water than land, and vice versa, which will affect the culture and economy in every space.

Keep Some Things to Yourself to Show the Reader You Understand This Place

World building isn’t about showing the reader everything but giving them the sense that this world might exist out there somewhere in the multiverse of imagination. If you understand the ins and outs, but don’t explain every little thing, you will captivate the reader and show them the world is alive and kicking.

A Few Thoughts on Using Magic to Build the World

Magic systems are also an excellent way to build up the world you’ve created, with many fun ways to experiment with how it all works.

In my longer series, the magic is musical, intermixed with colors and emotions. There isn’t a sword or gun in sight, though I have characters that specifically have certain attributes to their instruments to instill a sense of mystery. My main character wields a violin once wielded by a powerful figure in repeats past, an extension of her emotional state and a colored theme of black and white, while other characters might have purple, or green as their motif. But the thing that makes this different is these colors aren’t elemental at all.

Elemental magic can be done well, but I forgo elemental magic in favor of a musical, colorful, and emotional system. This blends in well with the poetry in the series, which is used to describe the attack of every combatant in a world at war across seven spheres. It also lends well to the psychological studies that will be dispersed across the novels.

Using magic fleshes things out enough to integrate it into the world. If magical abilities exist, then how might they be used to change the economy, or even build their structures? In my series, there are builder violinists who use their instruments to erect structures in little time.

Cellos are heavier in firepower than a flute. And the list goes on.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of an Inset or Plaque

Scattering pages throughout the book that specifically world-build is a brilliant method to expand upon concepts, but that doesn’t mean being lazy and only using insets to flesh things out. A notable example of this in recent media is Attack on Titan. The creators used scattered notes about the world throughout the story but kept the world-building aspect a major part of the story itself, not the information on what makes ODM gear work and the layout of the walls.

Bringing the World Together

It makes sense that world-building is multifaceted and complex, with many avenues to explore and get the job done. One author might not have any religion in his or her work, while another might make it their sole focus. Culture, technology, dialect, magic systems, and so many other aspects create that sense of immersion necessary to make the world come alive.

And that’s what we’re looking for.

A living world that a reader can imagine living in for real.

Forget about them coming.

If you build it, they will be whisked away without a choice.