Worldbuilding Tips

Most of my followers are worldbuilders of some form or another - be they cartographers, DMs, or writers. I often get asked similar questions about mapmaking or worldbuilding in general.

Though I think there are people much better qualified to answer these questions than myself, I thought I'd try to put something down with which I can answer people asking for MY opinion on things, which I realise may differ from what other worldbuilders may think.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order (well, some type of order, but not a strict one), here goes:

1. Determine your Themes

Most fictional worlds have themes or motifs that flavour most aspects of the societies that live in them. Try to come up with what you want YOUR world to be about. And, perhaps more importantly, come up with what your world is NOT about. Sometimes the things that are missing from a world can flavour it as much, if not more so, than what you decide to include.

Come up with a list of 5 - 10 things that are 'unique' about the world. They don't have to be unique - in fact, it's unlikely that anything you come up with will be unique. It's the combination of different themes and the degrees to which you use each one that makes the world unique. You can also give each of the 10 things about your world a rating from 1 to 10, indicating which are the strongest amongst them (1 being the primary and 10 being the least important)

For instance, I came up with these for Elyden:
Dying world - 1
Ancient - 2
Dead Gods - 3
Dreams - 4
Otherworld - 5
Bloodlines - 6
Magitech - 7

So with this in mind, I need to remember that wherever possible I need to remind people that Elyden is a dying world. I can do one through the other, for instance, I can show that it's an ancient world by describing a ruin from thousands of years ago. This fulfils the dying world theme (ruin = decay and the fall of ancient empires) as well as the ancient theme.

Of course, not every place or organisation needs to be related to these themes. Oversaturate the world with your themes and you run the risk of turning it into a self-parody. think of the real world - so many diverse and opposing cultures, religions and peoples, yet all of them live in a singular world. sometimes the exception can help cement the rule.

2. When starting to Worldbuild, start small - Bottom Up approach

If you're a DM, start with the inn where the adventure starts, then the town, then the dungeon where the first adventure takes place, then the roads leading to neighbouring settlements and so on. If you're a writer, detail the protagonists' backstory, their home, where the story starts, and expand from there. If you're just worldbuilding, you can start with the capital city of the viewpoint nation, detailing the ruler, districts, major organisations, religions and so on.

As you expand the scope of the world and add more places, you can go back and update the places you’ve already fleshed out to create a web of history and lore, so that no place seems isolated from its neighbours. People trade, war, and visit other nations - make sure that every nation shares something with another one, no matter how far from each other they are, even if it's something small and seemingly insignificant. It's something tangible you can anchor stories or lore to and later expand upon.

This is probably the better option for roleplaying or if you're writing a story in a specific region - you don't need to know the economics and languages and 1,000-year-old history of regions thousands of miles away from where the story takes place! You come up with information about the world at large only when and if you need it.

This is called the Inside Out or Bottom Up approach.

3. When starting to Worldbuild, start big - Top Down Approach

Start big - make a solar system and set down the planets and their relation to each other. name them, determine their moons, and any interesting facts about them. Then work on the primary world - detail its continents, mountains, determine your climates, where rainshadows are, sea currents, tides. You don't need to start this far 'up', but I'm making a point. this method concentrates on the broad strokes - world histories, major events and characters. You're not going to detail a specific tavern, but you might create the background for a continent-spanning trade route.

Make borders and nations, set out their capitals, trade routes between them and contested areas. Then you can start fleshing out interesting places around the world or in a specific nation as you want to.

This method is probably best for pure worldbuilders - you detail what you want where you want in whatever level of detail you want, fleshing out the world as a whole, rather than specific details. this approach is good in that it gives a good overview of the world and its themes.

Games masters using this approach might have problems having to come up with micro details on the fly as most information is on a more world-spanning scale - random generators might be helpful to quickly come up with names on the fly that you can then expand upon later.

This is called the Outside In approach or Top Down approach.

4. Or do Both!

I went for a combined approach - I started out in my adventure in Elyden by writing a novel on the fly - no prep, no research, no worldbuilding, so I started with a Bottom Up approach, coming up with world info as and when I needed it.

I then started adding more details that were outside of the scope of the novel, and settled on a mix of Top Down and Bottom Up - I made a world map, named most of the nations, but otherwise left them as blank slates, adding to them only as I need to add info. Periodically I'd zoom in onto a specific region (usually the Inner Sea, or Korachan specifically - which would become the viewpoint nation) and detail specific things - like regional geography, detailing certain cities and regions, organisations, rulers, or history. Sometimes I'd work on a large scale, sometimes on a small scale. Slowly I built up information on the world from both Top and Bottom and have now reached a point where I add things as the fancy takes me.

No one way is right or wrong and different worldbuilders find that they prefer different methodologies. The important thing is that you're adding something to the world and are having fun doing it. If you don't like writing languages - don't! If you're not into maps, don't worry - just make sure you know how every nation relates to its neighbours and leave the details abstract.

5. It's Your World

"Your rivers are wrong"

"But gravity doesn't work that way"

"Actually I think you'll find..."

We've all come across these before, either with our own work or on social media and message boards in reply to people's hard work. 

It's your world, do what you want to! If you want floating mountains, go ahead. if you want rivers that bifurcate downhill or run uphill, knock yourself out. But, if you want to make exceptions like this make sure you know how things are meant to work and make it clear to your audience that you know this, explaining why things work this way in your world. Read about geography and tectonics. Hydrology (particularly in relation to rivers, which is a touchy subject with some) is important, as is climate and things like rainshadows. 

Once you know the rules, go ahead and break them, but make sure that there is an in-world reason for why things are different in your world. Having said that, internal consistency is very important - your audience needs to know the rules and will suspend its disbelief so long as it understands the rules. Changing them halfway through or making arbitrary exceptions will make it difficult for people to care about the story unless there's a particularly good reason for the changes. Once the audience is familiar with the rules you can (and maybe should) subvert them, to subvert expectations. Magic, in particular, is a difficult subject - if it's a big part of the world you need rules for it, even if it's only for your own use - this will filter into anything people will see, so an internal logic will still be useful even if it's not explicitly referenced.

Of course, this only applies in a realistic setting. Rules of physics don't matter in a fairytale world, but even so, remember, your audience's default expectation is the real world. Anything different to this needs to be pointed out to them. Though technically a minor change, giving your planet a red sky is a jarring difference from what people expect, and they will need to be reminded of it. This could be a good opportunity for some unique worldbuilding or lore, which can serve to make your world unique.

Also: when offering advice to others regarding things that are 'wrong' please be constructive and keep in mind that you may be interacting with someone whose only starting out or just dabbling in this hobby and may not know what you know. Be nice and be constructive with them. Rather than say what's wrong or bad, point out what's good or what you like, and suggest how they can make their next work better.

6. Keep Detailed Notes

It may be obvious, but keeping notes (and backups of notes!) is probably the most important thing in worldbuilding. There are myriad different ways of bookkeeping. some people use wikis or programmes like Worldanvil. I started out with word and google drive. Some people like keeping detailed spreadsheets listing demographical information on cities - this makes it easy to order cells to get specific statistics when needed for instance.

The specifics don't really matter but make sure your notes (be they physical or digital) are searchable and that you can easily find information. I use LOTS of hyperlinks in my encyclopaedia (a word doc) so that I can easily click from entry to entry when searching things. If you have a bad memory (like me) you will be able to reference things quickly this way, which saves a lot of time. You will thank yourself in the future for keeping things organised, trust me!

Also, make sure to keep copies. this includes physical backups in the case of digital work such as an external hard drive, cloud storage or a pen drive. You do not want to lose all your information to a damaged hard drive or stolen laptop. likewise, don't solely rely on cloud storage. make sure to have backup files.

I once lost the most updated version of the encyclopaedia I had at the time,  and luckily I had an old backup from a few months earlier. I still lost loads of work and still run across details of the world I was sure I'd written down which might have been lost at that point. using the backup at least gave me something to start from again, rather than starting from scratch.

7. Inspiration is Everywhere

If you look for it.

There are the usual suspects - books, art, TV, and movies. But there are other things too you shouldn't overlook - documentaries, games, and the world around you. I love exploring old cities - I'm lucky enough that there are multiple towns and cities in my country that are hundreds if not thousands of years old, with lots of history related to the Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, Hospitalers, Inquisition, Arabs, English, WW2 and so-on, so I have a wealth of history to draw on from right near my doorstep. There are so many star forts and 16 - 18th-century fortifications around me that they have inevitably become a big inspiration to me, for instance. not to mention neolithic temples that are 5000 years old.

I look at architecture (old forts and palaces, as well as country homes), historical art (a great source of old fashion), and go to museums. I love scale models and cross-section art - all of which give me so many ideas and inspiration, and which are quite common in museums. Explore your hometown, walk along a historical trail - these usually have lots of information along the route with details on the area's history. If you're on holiday somewhere, go on tours and visit local historical sites. I recently went to Amsterdam and learnt a lot about water management and ports, which I applied to Elyden right away.

I've been buying National Geographic magazines for about 25 years now - I subscribe to new issues and pick up old ones at thrift stores and charity shops (they're probably one of the most common items in charity shops where I live and am lucky enough to live above one so I make sure to check it out regularly). Not only are the maps amongst the best in the world, but the articles are a great source of ideas. The older issues are also an insight into a bygone time - I'm currently reading issues from 1890 and 1930 - one former with an interesting article on the Ordinance Survey from a time that matches Elyden's; the latter detailing the antarctic expedition that H. P. Lovecraft read that inspired him to write at the Mountains of Madness.

Most of my ideas come to me through the above sources. Don’t just copy them. Instead, ask yourself: ‘how can this fit into my world?’ extrapolate and try to see how things would be different in a specific city.

Also, keep a notepad and pencil (or a digital way of taking notes) handy at all times. I'm always writing notes when I'm walking around and exploring. Every so often I go over these notes and flesh them out, either adding them to my encyclopaedia or keeping them as inspiration for future worldbuilding. This way I have a pool of ideas in different stages of completeness that I can lift from when making a new map or creating a new city or nation. Just a few idea I jotted down years ago might be enough to spur my imagination to flesh out a new realm or nation.

8. Your Work is not Sacrosanct!

I'm constantly going back and changing things as I come up with new histories and lore. Changing borders, moving cities, changing resources and trade-routes. anything to enrich the world's story.

If you come up with a new idea that means a map you’ve already made needs altering (different population, or location, or different road network or terrain), do it! It probably means the world will be richer and more detailed, so it’s worth the extra work to do.

Having said this, don't get bogged down in micromanaging. If your main purpose for worldbuilding is roleplaying, don't spend too much time on a tiny nation half the world away from the starting point of the adventure - indeed, one can make an argument that you don't need to detail that nation or its continent at all - if it has no bearing on the adventure or plot, ignore it.

Did you come up with some new lore, and a city name is perfect for it, but you're already using that name? Don’t worry, either reuse it (many city names in the real world are repeated across nations - hello America!) or steal the existing name, and give the existing city a new name instead. If you do give multiple places the same name, make sure that there’s an etymological reason for it, though. This can create interesting new histories for places that would otherwise not have been linked.

The list is by no means exhaustive, but it does touch upon some aspects of worldbuilding that you might not see in other more detailed articles on the subject.