So many people are now interested in the fantasy genre, and are especially interested in creating their own world for a book or project.

This is a huge undertaking, whether it’s for a few friends playing D&D, or if you’re building out a world for full fledged novel. It can be daunting to get started, but I’m going to help you break this down into easier pieces.

📝 Starting Out

The most important thing when you are building a fantasy world is understanding your ‘why’ for creating your world. This is your driving force for your project. You need this because it's very easy to get bogged down with how far you can take the details, also known as 'scope creep'.

Knowing what things actually serve your project will save you days of unnecessary creation of plants and animals that you may actually never use in the end.

For a fantasy novel, you don’t need 4,000 years of documented world history. You only need what serves the story.

*Caveat: If you are Worldbuilding for the sake of having fun and just being creative, take things as far as you like!

🔨 Building the World

Now comes the fun part!

🗺️ Maps

A great place to start is with a map. A map will take out a lot of the guesswork from your process. You won’t need to ask your self:

“Wait, how long would it take my character to reach the next town?”

A map will help you have a visual of your world at all times that you can go back to and reference with your questions.

If you’ve heard of the rice method for map making, I highly recommend this if you don’t have a general shape in your mind for your world. Basically you drop some grains of rice at random on a piece of paper, and then out line all of the groups of rice grains to form land masses and islands. You can even use the rice to determine where your mountains and lower areas of land are. The higher the mound of rice, the higher the mountain.

I do ultimately recommend a digitally drawn map, that way you can add layers to it as you need to in a drawing software. The ability to zoom in on a new layer and add smaller details is also very helpful. For instance you can draw out a map of your world, then on another layer add icons for where each type of vegetation and animal can be found.

Then add another layer for kingdoms, villages, notable locations, etc. Having a layered digital map allows you to be consistent and also have many types of exportable maps to reference.

Some great software that is free/cheap to do this in would be Procreate, Gimp, or Affinity.

📜 History

A great next step after a map is to outline your major historical events, that act as a kind of historical pillars.

Step 1: Define your major historical events/catastrophes

Think: great cataclysms or the formation of a kingdom. Determining these events will allow you to reflect and be able to pull smaller details for your worldbuild. For example, maybe a specific type of food became a cultural norm because it was the only food accessible during a past war, and then became a staple meal.

Step 2: Write out why these affect the present world

Once you have your major events laid out, write out how each one affects the present. This will help you form character stories, political dynamics, and so much more.

Step 3: Build the connecting events

Decide what events happened in between those events, how people recovered or didn’t, what scars those disasters left.

⚖️ Physical Laws

It's important to make some decisions on how your world is the same or different from our natural world in terms of it's natural laws. Gravity, thermodynamics, mechanics, etc.

Think about things like gravity: is your worlds' gravity the same or stronger than earths?

Does force work the same way? If a character is hit by an object, do they fly unnaturally far?

🗂️ The Nitty Gritty of Worldbuilding

Once you have your map, and a timeline of historical events, from here it will be much easier to come up with things like a magic system, deities, races and more. You will probably have already made some during the process of creating maps and history. Here’s a few categories to start you off, though I’ll remind you, if you are hoping to finish an end product, do not get lost in the weeds with worldbuilding.

🌎 Deities

For each Deity outline these things:

• What each deity is presides over

• What power they have

• Who worships / honors them

• Who their enemies are

It's also important to outline how deities affect Cultures, even things like clothing, traditions, holidays, rituals, etc.

✨ Magic System

Next create your magic system! (If you want magic in your world.)

Hard Magic System: Your magic system has clear rules, costs, benefits, and drawbacks. This magic system helps your world feel grounded and realistic.

Soft Magic System: Your magic system is less defined, and it's purpose is to create wonder and awe rather than to ground the world in reality.

Power System: Each magic user has their own powers, defined by a unique characteristic. This system can be combined with one of the previous two.

🛠️ Technology

It's important to outline how far technology has advanced in your world at the present era.

This can mean your world features carriages and muskets, all the way to computers and advanced medicine.

Make sure to have a section for each of these categories:

• 🗡️ Weapons

• 🐎 Transport

• 💊 Medicine

👨🏽 Races

For each race of people, outline the following: 

• 🙄 Temperment

• 👱‍Appearance

• 🗺️ Where they live

• ⛪️ Religous or Not

• 💵 Socioeconomic Status

• ✨ Whether or not they access magic

If you're stuck, study a real world culture you are interested in or connected to!

🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Factions

Factions are organizations in your world that typically operate outside of the larger governmental structures. 

In stories, they push characters forward, create conflicts, bring resolutions, etc.

Outline any factions that will play an important role in your story.

Describe how they came to be, who leads them, and what their defining creed is.

📍 Notable Locations

On your map, mark down a few critical locations that you want to operate in. There isn't a need to name everything, just a few key locations that will impact your story/game/project.

This is why it is improtant to create your map first! 

You will want to understand things like travel time between locations, the size of these locations, history around them, etc.

💵 Economy

For your economy, a good way to start is to assign a basic value to each type of currency. For example:

• 1 Gold Piece = Buys a loaf of Bread

• 10 Gold Pieces = Buys a Sword

• 100 Gold Pieces = Buys a House

Do this for each type of currency available (Copper, Silver, etc.)

You can get into details later, but a general understanding is all that is needed to start.

 📖 Compendium

A compendium is a database of:

• 🐄 Animals

• 🌱 Plants

• 💀 Monsters

• 🗡️ Important Objects

  
  

that are important/relevant to your story. Think about how these connect to each Race, and where each would be located on your map. 

For example, animals will be food for these cultures to eat, and plants will likely determine their clothing.

This is where having a digital map wins!

💥 Break the Rules 

The best part about Worldbuilding is that these rules can't stop you if you want to do something different! 

Go wild!

Have three magic systems! 

Get rid of gravity!

The sky is the limit!

Just be sure to have fun with it!

Organizing It All

If you’re looking for a way to keep all of your worldbuilding information straight, I have a template built in Notion that keeps all your information easily accessible and seamlessly linked together! I’ve spent the last three years honing this template to serve worldbuilders and storytellers of all varying degrees!

So if you’re not quite ready to go all in, that’s fine! I have a basic version that serves those starting out, all the way up to the advanced worldbuilder who needs a place to keep all of their world lore.

If that sounds like something you’d want, check out my Worldbuilding Wares!

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Hi! I’m Chris, an avid fan of worldbuilding and writing here to help you break into the craft!

For more on my worldbuilding project, as well as tips and resources for worldbuilding you can follow me on any of these channels:

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You can also email me with questions at worldbuildingchris@gmail.com